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SERMONS AND ADDRESSES 



BY 



Rev. JACOB MERRILL MANNING, D. D. 

PASTOR OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON, MASS. 





BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1889 



BIOGEAPHIOAL NOTE. 



Jacob Mereill Manning was born on the 31st of 
December, 1824, in Greenwood, Steuben County, New 
York. To a pious ancestry, a Christian home, and 
communion with nature, he was largely indebted for 
what he was and what he did in his life-work. He 
fitted for college at Franklin Academy, Prattsburg, 
New York. There he made a public profession of 
religion, uniting with the Presbyterian Church and 
consecrating himself to the work of the gospel minis- 
try. He entered Amherst College in 1846, and was 
graduated in 1850, receiving as his appointment the 
Philosophical Oration. The subject of his oration at 
Commencement was " Knowledge in its Relation to 
Mental Development." 

One of his professors,^ who still lives, says of him 
at that time : " He was manly, thoughtful, earnest, and 
sincere, — a hard student, a thorough scholar, an ele- 
gant writer, a good speaker, and an exemplary Chris- 
tian. Made originally of precious metal, cast in a 
fine mould, he took on a finer polish at each successive 
stage of his education." 

He studied theology at Andover, and was ordained 

1 Professor William S. Tyler, D.D. 



viii CONTENTS. 

Sickness and its Lessons . . . . .^ . . 395 

The Abundant Entrance 412 

The Victory over Death 425 

The Gospel of the Windows 438 

The Natural and the Spiritual Body .... 450 

Christian Missions and the Social Ideal .... 463 



ADDRESSES. 

Samuel Adams 483 

John Brown 508 

Eulogy upon Henry Wilson, delivered in the State 

House, Boston 532 



SERMONS. 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE CROSS. 

And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about 
the throne and the beasts and the elders : and the number of them 
was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands ; 
saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to re- 
ceive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and 
glory, and blessing. — Revelation v. 11, 12. 

One of the symbols of Christianity is a globe sur- 
mounted by a cross. That symbol does not exag- 
gerate the truth it seeks to honor. The cross is the 
great fact in human history. It will yet be seen to 
overshadow all other facts, will survive them all, will 
be an object of ever-growing wonder when they all are 
forgotten. Human history will run its course, will be 
finished up, will be laid aside to decay and disappear. 
The very traces of events shall be worn away from 
the world's surface. There shall be no vestiges of 
kingdoms, of states, of hierarchies, left on the face of 
the earth. Only the cross shall remain. That shall 
be monumental over the grave of all else. That shall 
forever be growing more conspicuous on into the ages 
of ages. It shall keep the memory of our planet 
fresh and dear through eternity. The redeemed souls 
dwellino^ in immortalitv and the ansrels out of the 
seventh heaven will ask after that cross, will speak of 
its wondrous virtues, will watch with tender interest 



2 SERMONS. 

the motions and phases of the far-off ball on which it 
was lifted up that all men might be drawn unto it. 
That ball will be to them the place of the cross, and 
nothing more. It will be nothing to the holy im- 
mortals that great empires were founded on the earth ; 
that it was the theatre of civil convulsions and blood- 
shed ; that upon it were builded mighty churches for 
the glory of men ; that it witnessed gorgeous ceremoni- 
als, from which the cross was left out, or under which 
it was concealed from view ; that systems of doctrine, 
constructed in the pride of human intellect, have 
fought for the mastery on its surface : all these things, 
filling so large a space in our sphere of vision now, 
will be nothing then. For aught they could do to 
prevent, this earth might sail on everlastingly, un- 
noticed by the bright inhabitants of heaven. The 
cross — the cross alone — saves the little planet from 
oblivion, causes every saint and angel to ask after it, 
to gaze wonderingly upon it, to regard with peculiar 
interest those of their number who came from it. It 
is the altar-world, to which the Son of God went to 
lay down His life and take it again. They look upon 
it, and their hearts are melted. They take their 
crowns from their heads, and turn toward Him who 
sitteth on the throne, — Him who was then the victim, 
but who is now the King. And they cast those crowns 
at His feet, saying, " Worthy is the Lamb that was 
slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and 
strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing." 

In saying that the cross is that alone which will 
perpetuate the memory of our world, I do not speak 
simply of tlia wood on which our Saviour was crucified, 
but of the whole redemptive work of which that cruel 
wood is suggestive. Christ's whole work, from the 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE CROSS. 3 

time of leaving His throne until He returned to it, is 
that which calls forth the adoring song of the host in 
heaven : His putting off the forms of divinity, and 
entering into the form of humanity ; His corporate 
union with our race, so as to be a partaker of our in- 
firmities and temptations and sorrows and struggles ; 
His beautiful life of meekness and charity ; His pure 
teachings, and His holy submission culminating in 
Gethsemane and Calvary ; His triumph over death ; 
His fulfilling of justice ; His power, purchased by 
His sufferings, to give the quickening and sanctifying 
Spirit unto His people. When we speak of the cross, 
we mean Him who bore the cross — who took away 
the sin of the world ; who prevailed to open the 
seven-times sealed book of redemption ; who here, on 
this earth of ours, solved the mystery of forgiveness ; 
who explained that dark problem at which the uni- 
verse stood aghast, and showed, to principalities and 
powers in heavenly places, how sinful man might be 
just with God. It was on our globe that Christ took 
up the awful enigma of sin, made atonement for it, 
wrought deliverance from it, and taught the wonder- 
ing host of heaven how it could be an occasion for 
exalting the divine glory. This redeeming and law- 
honoring work, all associated with the cross, is that 
which shall perpetuate the memory of our world, and 
make it forever dear to the assembled worshipers in 
heaven. 

Do I seem to over-estimate the history of redemp- 
tion, and to disparage all other history ? Let us see, 
then, how inevitable it is that the result should be 
as I have indicated. The memorableness of an event 
does not depend on its greatness as seen when it 
occurs, but on its relation to the future. Some of the 



4 SERMONS. 

most splendid scenes in history are forgotten almost as 
soon as witnessed, all their meaning being limited to 
the passing hour ; and other scenes, too obscure to be 
noticed while passing, have so taken hold of coming 
ages as to wax great and overshadowing in the retro- 
sj^ect. There was a time when the boy Shakespeare 
excited but little interest in his native town ; but he 
so wrote as to make the ages his debtors. And now 
Ms name saves that town from oblivion. Who would 
visit Stratford-upon-Avon, or regard it with any ro- 
mantic interest, but for the poet who there wrought in 
obscurity for the delight of mankind? In like man- 
ner, what is this globe but for the great Name asso- 
ciated with it ? A time is coming when it will be lost 
in the wilderness of worlds. Who in heaven will value 
or remember it on its own account ? But Christ was 
born there. There He did a. work which took hold 
upon all the future, — whose meaning stands out more 
and more as eternity wears on. That is the poor 
earth's monument; that saves it from being forgot- 
ten, and makes it evermore an object of tender regard. 
Other names besides that of Shakespeare have made 
other places dear or memorable by the same law. 
How many of us would laiow, or care to know, that 
there is such a place as Ayrshire, but for the poetry 
of Robert Burns ? Florence, the native citj^ of Dante, 
though she banished him while he lived, begged his 
ashes of Ravenna, that she might encircle herself with 
the halo of his immortal fame. What should we of 
to-day care for the English hamlet of Bedford if John 
Bunyan had not lived there ? How many proud 
noblemen of that time, who knew not his name, are 
now forgotten ! They were like mighty ships left to 
rot by the shore ; he launched his boat on the bound- 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE CROSS. 6 

less sea of the future. They built great houses on the 
sand ; his foundation was upon a rock. What is left 
of Genoa, that we care for, save the memory of Co- 
lumbus ? What of Mt. Vernon, except the tomb of 
Washington ? There are many rocks along the coast 
of New England, but only one on which the Pilgrims 
landed. There have been, and still are, whole forests 
of oaks in Connecticut ; but only one saved the royal 
charter from violence. Many eminences higher than 
Bunker Hill are not known ten miles away ; yet that 
eminence is known wherever liberty is loved. Many 
battles, greater than the battle there fought, have 
been fought and forgotten ; but that will ever be re- 
membered. It took hold upon the future. It was 
not of transient but of permanent interest, — all 
struggles of freedom do but repeat and prolong its 
voice. How many places in our country, that we had 
not heard of twenty years ago, are now named as 
familiar household words ! And those obscure spots 
will be remembered, and eagerly inquired after, when 
many a proud city of to-day has perished and been 
forgotten. The deeds done in those once unknown 
localities will make them dearer and dearer to suc- 
cessive generations. 

But even the most memorable places now named, 
once so little regarded, will in time lose their signifi- 
cancy. There is a future into which even their mean- 
ing does not reach. They reveal to us a law that is 
full of instruction ; yet, by the operation of that very 
law, the dead past will one day bury them with its 
other dead. They will cease to have any living inter- 
est, any vital relation to present and future things, 
and hence the great storehouse of oblivion will claim 
them. They have a mystic hold upon us now ; but 



6 SERMONS. 

their spell will be broken, their charm will be gone, 
when we step out of time into eternity. If there be 
any immortal substance in any of them, that essence 
will be only a part of the work which Christ did, and 
hence His cross will absorb or overshadow all. That 
peculiar charm which Plymouth has for us now, — 
that mystic cord which draws us toward ancient 
battlefields, and to the quiet spots where sages and 
poets have dwelt, — though lasting as time, is, after 
all, but temporal. There is only one spot on all the 
earth that can never lose its interest. It is Calvary. 
That hallows, not only Palestine, but the world, — em- 
balms it forevermore. There comes a day when the 
spot where Warren fell will have no more interest 
than ten thousand other forgotten places ; a time when 
those sympathies and tastes which now give the 
birthplace of Shakespeare its charm will be no more ; 
when a thousand spots of earth, now the Meccas of 
our hearts, will have been disenchanted ; when all the 
earth, save as hallowed by the one fact of redemption, 
will be commonplace and stale. It is a grand con- 
summation into which the people of this country have 
come up out of a baptism of blood, so changing 
their supreme and organic law as to be indeed and 
forever free. Yet this event, consecrating the century 
in which we live, endearing to us every name recorded 
in its favor, though so august now, is circumscribed 
in its power. There is a life into which its pecu- 
liar charm cannot reach ; there are worlds on whose 
regard it lays no special claim. Christ alone did the 
work which concerns every being in the universe ; the 
work which never decays, which never becomes a 
thing of the past ; which excites new wonder, and 
calls forth loftier notes of praise, as the ages of ages 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE CROSS. 7 

circle on. That wondrous humiliation and death 
stand related to all worlds, and to all the cycles of an 
eternal future. The mightiest personage on earth, 
comparing himself with Christ, is still forced to say, 
" He must increase, but I must decrease." When 
temporal kings have vanished into the past, and are 
no more remembered, the song shall go up in a sweeter 
and grander strain, '' Worthy the Lamb." Other em- 
pires will cease to be of any account ; but " His king- 
dom is an everlasting kingdom, and of His govern- 
ment there shall be no end." " Of old hast thou laid 
the foundation of the earth ; and the heavens are the 
work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt 
endure ; yea, all of them shall wax old hke a gar- 
ment ; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they 
shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy 
years shall have no end." Only one interest in the 
universe can be eternal. It is the great work of love, 
whose symbol is a cross, and which is forever asso- 
ciated with Calvary. Love in the form of self-sacri- 
fice, going after the lost, working out redemption from 
guilt, triumphing over the dark fact of sin, — this is 
the everlasting kingdc^m, beginning in Christ, com- 
passing all the worlds, and upon which He is ever- 
more enthroned. 

Such is the destiny of Christ's work. Only so 
much of it as is part and parcel of Christ's work, and 
over which the cross might be fitly lifted, as it is over 
His, can thus endure. Whatever is not identified with 
His great salvation must perish when the fashion of 
the world passeth away. 

We read of the works of some men, that the fire 
shall try them, and that their works shall be burned 
up. Not so of Christ. He builded with silver, and 



8 SERMON^ 

gold, and precious stones ; and his work, when the fire 
trieth it, shall be found unto praise, and glory, and 
eternal life. Are we building with the same imperish- 
able materials ? All is hay, wood, and stubble which 
is not a continuation of the Redeemer's work. We 
must have the mind that was in Christ, and live as 
He lived, or all our living will be transitory, — chaff 
which the wind driveth away. We must follow in 
His footsteps, and associate all the experiences of our 
lives with the cross. Then the cross will preserve 
our works, — will make them as enduring and glori- 
ous as itself. 

We shall not do this imperishable work by culti- 
vating simply a sentimental respect for the form of 
the cross. Nothing can be more refined or beautiful 
than a sincere Christian life ; yet Christianity should 
not be confounded with fine art. Christ showed but 
small regard for the ancient temple adorned with 
goodly stones. His manner of speaking of it greatly 
shocked the feelings of the devout Jews. The im- 
mortal soul was that for which He cared. We shall 
lose His spirit, and become Jews while bearing the 
Christian name, if the aesthetic element in our faith 
is allowed to sway us. Taking up the cross, and bear- 
ing it daily after Christ, is not wearing it as an or- 
nament to our persons ; is not lifting its carved or 
gilded image over our houses of worship ; is not rear- 
ing vast cathedrals on cruciform foundations ; is not 
covering the walls and windows of the sanctuary with 
blazing pictures of our Lord's passion. We cease 
working the works of God, and do the work of our 
own vain hearts, when we thus turn from spirit to 
matter, from substance to form, from sense to sound, 
from downright obedience to daintily cultivating the 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE CROSS. 9 

fine arts. Christianity is not fancy and taste. Hon- 
oring the cross is not pleasing- ourselves. You may 
bring to your aid the genius of a Canova, a Raphael, 
a Mendelssohn, a Garrick ; may bestow never so much 
wealth and pains to meet the wants of mere taste ; 
may make your whole religious life one beautiful 
and costly pageant: but all this work will vanish 
away, like some gorgeous cloud-palace, the moment a 
beam out of eternity touches it. It is worshiping 
the achievements of human art, not worshiping the 
Father in spirit and in truth. It is a Idnd of sacri- 
lege. It is turning the forms of Christianity into an 
amusement, putting them on a level with the concert- 
hall and the playhouse. It may be aU very fasci- 
nating ; it may be a charming substitute for hard 
thinking in the pulpit, and hard listening in the pews ; 
it may have on the guise of devotion, and call itself 
after many sacred names. But it is of the earth, 
earthy. It is all seen and temporal. The element of 
eternity does not come into it. It is no part of the 
cross of Christ. It will perish amid the elements 
that melt with fervent heat, in the day when the fire 
shall try every man's work. Not one echo of all the 
earth-born strain will live in that song which goeth 
up before the Lamb. 

But while guarding against one extreme, I would 
not forget its opposite. If those who make religion 
a fine art forsake the Cross of Christ, those who are 
forever battling against tasteful forms of worship 
commit the same sin, and render themselves very 
unamiable besides. Union and communion in good 
works is the normal condition of the various bodies 
of Christians. Not devotion to their common Lord, 
but their own lusts, beget wars and fightings among 



10 SERMONS. 

them. The surest way of honoring a truth is to hold 
it u]D and exemplify it, not to fight the opposite errors. 
When Moses would save his people from the flying 
fiery serpents, he did not turn serpent-killer, but lifted 
up the brazen serpent. Thus is Christ lifted up ; and 
if we keep Him in full view of men, not embroiling 
the Lord's house with religious controversy. He will 
draw all men unto Him. The champions of truth, 
and defenders of the faith, are not necessarily fight- 
ing-men, — men of war from their youth, of so mili- 
tant a zeal as to blow defiance through all their tones, 
the lines on their faces constantly drawn into one 
concentrated belligerent scowl. The most effective 
way of pleading for Christ against His enemies is to 
let Him plead His own cause before them. Lay aside 
the club of controversy and introduce Him, and all 
His adversaries will speedily be ashamed. If a sen- 
suous, materialistic worship has no part in Him, the 
same is true of all else that does not give to His cross 
the chief and foremost place. The way to scatter 
darkness is not to be forever beating it, but to bring 
in light. Christ is the light of the world. There is in 
Him a surpassing beauty, which all men can be made 
to feel. Forms and creeds must change, as our social 
and intellectual culture changes ; and they, at the 
best, supply only superficial and brief-Hved wants. 
But the want in us which Christ meets is central and 
everlasting. No education can change it, save to make 
it intenser and more vast. That is the susceptibility 
in us that needs to be awakened. Here are the 
measures of meal in which to hide the good leaven ; 
there the soil which, receiving the grain of mustard- 
seed, shall nourish it up into a mighty tree. Let love 
to Christ become the master passion, and we need not 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE CROSS. 11 

trouble ourselves about other passions ; it will swallow 
them up. The liealing and saving power of the gos- 
pel does not dwell beneath our crossed swords. Are 
you a polemic ? The day is coming when no one will 
care whether you conquered or were defeated, for the 
warfare itself will be forgotten. Are you a zealot for 
some human theory of the church ? Your work will 
perish with the world of which it was born. Are you 
a propagandist, teaching for doctrine the conunand- 
ments of men ? One generation of them goeth, and 
another cometh ; only the word of the Lord abideth. 
Do you chase after every new religious dream that 
seizes on your fancy ? What can that dream do for 
you when your soul awaketh ? Are you a proselytizer 
in the interest of some religious party ? Your converts 
will curse you, for turning them from the substance 
to the shadow of truth, in the day when Christ shall 
be ail in all. 

Do not misunderstand me. There is here no con- 
troversy with any man's taste, or peculiar culture, or 
natural procli\H[ties toward this or that form and 
method of expressing his new life in Christ Jesus. 
Let the river make its own channel in which to flow : 
all our anxiety should be for the fountain. What 
quarrel need we have with Methodism, with Episco- 
pacy, with Presb}i:erianism, except to protest against 
allowing either of them, or any form or theory of 
church order, our own not excepted, to usurp the 
place of the Cross of Christ ? There are conventions, 
and courses of sermons, and newspapers, and endowed 
faculties, and voluntary societies, in the interest and 
for the furtherance of human view^s of doctrine and 
polity. Each one of these views has some special 
adaptation ; but no one nor all of them can ever be 



12 SERMONS. 

the main concern. If we allow them to absorb our 
interest, the main concern will very likely be forgot- 
ten. If Christians press the claims of these, and 
bring them into conflict, and make it a chief business 
to build up one and tear down the others, who is to 
look after a world that lieth in wickedness ? Who is 
to hold up the blood-stained symbol of redemption ? 
These human contrivances will have vanished out of 
sight one day ; and what if it should then be found 
that there are no saved souls inside of them, — no 
everlasting temple built within these showy scaffold- 
ings ? " Give me the new converts," is the voice of 
a true Christian discipleship, " and you may have all 
the ecclesiastical powers. Let me see pure religion 
planted in the hearts of men, and you may have that 
earthly grandeur which perishes with the using." 
Whoever is an earnest co-worker with Christ will be 
tenacious of no forms, no theories of the church ; he will 
only be afraid of that which crowds the regenerating 
spirit of God into a secondary place. Let that spirit 
come. Let it be what we pray for, what we labor for, 
— our joy when it is present, and our desire when it 
is absent. That spirit does the deep, the everlasting- 
work. It creates the fountain. It opens the well of 
living water. Its triumphs are not superficial, but 
central ; not transitory, but enduring as God. Be 
afraid of any schemes, though called religious, which 
keep this divine inspiration at a distance, or make it 
secondary, or cause it to be forgotten. The new birth 
of souls, and growth in all true holiness, is the cross — 
the work of Christ, — that which shall swell the chorus 
in heaven. Oh that Christ might see of the travail of 
His soul ; that He might be satisfied ; that there might 
be joy in heaven over returning prodigals ; that we 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE CROSS. 13 

who call Christ " Lord " might enter into His labors 
for the rescue of poor immortals ! Then the cross 
would be honored. Then church order, and doctrine, 
and forms of worship would grow up as this sj)irit of 
redemption had need of them. Then it would soon 
be decided which of them all is truest and best ; for 
the inner life would choose that one which made it 
most effectual in reaching and saving the lost, and all 
the others would wax old, and wither up, and vanish 
away. Then we should build up temples, each church 
and each believer, such as the fire cannot destroy. 
We should provide polished stones for that temple 
whose builder and maker is God. Instead of the sad 
moan, " Nothing but leaves, nothing but leaves," as 
we approach our Lord's footstool, we should be able, 
in that dread harvest-hour, to say, " Master, behold 
the shocks of corn, full and ripe, which these ha^nds 
have reaped for thee." " Souls are our hire," was the 
thought which gladdened the apostle in his penury. 
Oh that we all mioht learn to reo:ard them as our 
wages ! Then we should have the treasure that wax- 
eth not old. Then our work, like Christ's, would be 
imperishable ; for it would be the same work, and 
over it all the same cross would be lifted up, — that 
cross which is to remain the sole memorial of our 
world, and for bearing which both Master and disci- 
ples shall be crowned in the same kingdom. 

It was in this spirit that the first preachers of 
Christianity labored. You can find no forms of wor- 
ship, no theory of church government prescribed for 
all ages and nations, laid down in the gospels and 
epistles. Paul would let the Jews enjoy their ancient 
customs, so long as those customs did not obscure 
the cross, and so long as they were not imposed on 



14 SERMONS. 

the Gentile converts. Where the spirit of the Lord 
was, there was liberty for each disciple to act out his 
faith naturally, — through such machinery as was 
congenial to him, or without machinery. " Unto the 
Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the 
Jews ; to them that are under the law, as under 
the law, that I might gain them that are under the 
law; to them that are without law, as without law 
(being not without law to God, but under the law 
to Christ), that I might gain them that are without 
the law. ... I therefore so run, not as uncertainly ; 
so fight I, not as one that beateth the air." It 
is the permanent in Christianity, not the transient, 
the essential, not what is merely incidental, that en- 
gages the apostle's heart, and all his powers. Why is 
it, my brethren, that we do not learn to follow this 
inspired exam23le ? We vex ourselves over that which 
is outward and formal ; and most fitly may this worry 
of burs be called " a beating of the air." We can do 
but little, however much pains we take, toward shap- 
ing church polity and forms of worship. Such inci- 
dental matters are determined by influences we cannot 
control, — by the spirit of the age, great social forces, 
and ideas of government prevailing in the state. 
They may have Dissenting churches in England, but 
the really prevailing theory of church government 
there is predetermined by the nature of the civil 
government. That is the type, the model, the sur- 
rounding and silently moulding power. So in this 
country. We sometimes say that Congregationalism 
gave birth to our civil institutions. But I think it 
would be nearer the truth to say that the spirit of 
liberty, evoked by what is called the Protestant Refor- 
mation, gave birth to our civil institutions and also to 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE CROSS. 15 

Congregationalism. Now that spirit is around us all. 
It is the informing and controlling spirit, not only 
of our nation, but of modern times. We are swept 
onward unconsciously by its currents. Arctic adven- 
turers have sometimes traveled northward for days at 
a rapid pace, and then found themselves farther south- 
ward than when they set out. The motion of the 
vast ice-pack on which they were, was against them. 
So, in this country, men may travel toward despotism 
in their ideas of church order ; but, after all their 
pains, they will one day find themselves nearer simple 
Independency than when they started. The people 
of our country will never consent as a mass, and for 
any long period, to submit to a religious regime which 
puts them into a state of tutelage under human gov- 
ernors. They will carry that spirit of independence, 
which the state has nourished in them, into their 
ecclesiastical connections ; and there it will work, like 
new wine in old bottles, unless perchance, fortunately 
for both, they be new bottles. No matter what name 
the ecclesiastical body is called by, freemen in it will 
make it free. Those of us, then, who feel that our 
view of church order and forms of worship is in sym- 
pathy with the free spirit of the nation, need not be 
anxious, nor at all nervous. We can well afford to 
devote ourselves with all our might to the more cen- 
tral and spiritual purpose of the gospel. These sub- 
ordinate matters need not tempt us away from the 
cross. We can safely trust them to the great cur- 
rents of influence, which will bear them on to all the 
success they deserve, and which will undermine oppos- 
ing theories. We need not assail, and attempt to 
demolish with angry strokes, the icebergs of ecclesias- 
ticism. There is a force in the ages which will sooner 



16 SERMONS. 

or later float them out of the polar darkness in which 
they were gendered. And in warmer and sunnier 
latitudes, meeting tlie gulf stream of free ideas and 
institutions, their cold grandeur will lose its sparkle ; 
and they will crumble, and melt, and blend with the 
surroundino^ waters. The cross is our standard, — 
that let us follow. In that we conquer, — conquer, not 
for time, but for eternity ; conquer, not hierarchies, 
but the Prince of the powers of the air, — the first 
and the last enemy of the Lamb that was slain. 

I have alluded to doctrine. What is the relation of 
that to the cross of Christ? As the doctrines are 
often preached, presented to the specidative under- 
standing regardless of the heart, they may divert our 
minds from that which is of central and permanent 
concern in the Christian calling. The profoundest 
Christian doctrines have a vital connection with the 
cross. But their vitality depends on that connection. 
When severed from the cross,- they lose their life and 
their power to save. It is by offering a personal Sa- 
viour to men that we shall most effectually teach and 
enforce the substance of them all. The Scriptures 
compare those doctrines to water, — the water of life 
proceeding forth from the throne of God and the 
Lamb. But they are not this life to the soul when 
set forth in scholastic and labored phrase. Only as 
lifted up on Calvary, in the form of a crucified Re- 
deemer, do they draw all men unto them. They are 
the living water. But when that water takes the form 
of philosophy, it does not bless our thirsty souls, — 
we look off, as it were, on a dreadful ocean of waters, 
and stand yearning and shivering on the awful shore. 
It is in Christ, coming to each one of us as a personal 
Saviour, that we see the blessing lifted out of the 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE CROSS. 17 

" vasty deep," and transformed into streams gushing 
by tlie wayside of the poor pilgrim, of which he drinks 
and is refreshed. 

What every soid of us needs is not so much to 
know what we believe as whom we believe. That 
was the knowledge of which Paul dared to boast ; and 
without which, he confessed, though he understood all 
mystery and all knowledge, he would be as sounding 
brass and a tinkling cymbal. He knew in part, and 
he prophesied in part ; and not until the perfect should 
come, would the imperfect be done away. But he 
thanked God that he was permitted to know one thing 
even in this life, — he knew whom he believed, and 
that knowing of Christ, as his Saviour and Lord, 
was a treasure which nothing else could give or take 
away. 

Brother-man, with a soul full of trouble over these 
great questions of sin, redemption, immortality, hear 
what Christ saith to the heavy-laden. Are the cham- 
pions of warring creeds calling to you, and saying, 
" Lo here ! Lo there ! " "Go not out after them." 
Do sticklers for theories of the church and forms of 
worship take up the cry from all quarters, until you 
are bewildered by their noise and shoutings ? " Go 
not out after them." " Come," says Christ, — come 
unto what? Unto that which flatters your pride, 
which pleases your taste, which falls in with your 
earthly ambitions, which humors your fleshly desires ? 
No, poor laboring soul ; not unto these, unto nothing 
able only to meet some brief -lived and superficial want, 
but '' Come " — oh, listen I listen as though there 
were no other voice in all the world ! — " Come unto 
me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will 
give you rest." 



18 SERMONS. 

Where is this Christ, this meek and lowly-hearted 
Friend, who thus tenderly pleads with you to take His 
yoke upon you and learn of Him ? Is He far off, or 
near at hand ? He is close by your side. He lays 
His hand upon you. He whispers, in the silence, 
''Follow me." Say not in thine heart, Who shall 
ascend into heaven to bring Christ down from above, 
or, Who shall descend into the deep to bring Christ 
up ? " The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and 
in thy heart ; that is, the word of faith which we 
preach, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the 
Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God 
hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." 
We miss the living water by going out after it. It 
gushes at the feet of every man ; and if any man 
thirst, let him drink. 

"Came North, came South, came East, came West, 
Four sages to a mountain crest. 
Each pledged to search the wide world round 
Until the wondrous well be found. 
Before a crag they take their seat, 
Pure bubbling waters at their feet. 
Says one, ' This water seems not rare, 
Not even bright, but pale as air.' 
The second says, ' So small and dumb, 
From earth's deep centre can it come ? ' 
The third, ' This well is small and mean, 
Too petty for a village green ; ' 
The fourth, ' Thick crowds I looked to see : 
Where the true well is, these must be.' 
They rose and left the mountain crest, 
One north, one east, one south, one west ; 
O'er many seas and deserts wide 
They wandered, thirsting, till they died. 
The simple shepherds by the mountain dwell. 
And dip their pitchers in the wondrous well." 



SONS OF GOD THROUGH CHRIST. 

He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as 
many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of 
God, even to them that believe on His name : which were born, not of 
blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 

John L 11-13. 

The salvation of the human soul is dependent on 
just one thing, receiving Clirist : " As many as re- 
ceived Him, to them gave He power to become the 
sons of God." So important a statement ought to 
be looked at closely, and carefully weighed. We are 
saved when we stand in the relation of sonship to 
God ; responding, that is, with filial piety, to that 
fatherliness which He feels toward us. We have 
been thrown out of t^at relation into a condition of 
spiritual orphanage, ^y nature we do not see God 
as a Father, but as "an hard Master." We are still 
His children, for He is " the Father of the spirits of 
all flesh," but the child-feeling within us is dead in 
the midst of our " trespasses and sins." He would see 
His orphaned child restored, — longs to be able to say, 
" My son was dead, and is alive again ; and was lost, 
and is found." And this longing of the Father's 
heart is met by our receiving Him who was both the 
Son of God and the Son of man, — the Son of man 
and our brother, in the sense that He shares with us, 
in some wonderful manner, all the pains of our orphan- 
age ; the Son of God, in the sense that He enjoys, 
perfectly and in an infinite degree, that sonship into 



20 SERMONS. 

wMch we have power to enter througli believing on 
His name. 

The force of these words, " Son of man," lies in the 
opening announcement of the text : " He came unto 
His own." There may be here a primary reference 
to the Jews, of whose stock He came in the line of 
David; but the broader meaning, which makes all 
mankind " His own," is just as true. The whole 
human family became " His own " by His taking 
humanity upon Him. That taking of humanity was 
what made Him the " Son of Man," — the Brother, as 
God is the Father, of the spirits of all flesh. And 
He is no unsympathizing brother. By virtue of His 
humanity we are made " His own " to Him ; and in 
this relation it is that He takes all our human infirmi- 
ties upon Him, and comes to us, — revealed as a 
bearer of our temptations and sins, though Himself 
without sin. And He is not ashamed to call us His 
brethren, to be numbered with the transgressors, and 
to stand forth and make confession of our sins for us 
in the presence of His Father. 

But many who are His own — His by virtue of His 
being in humanity — do not receive Him. This was 
especially true in the beginning of the gospel ; most 
true of the stock of Abraham. It is more or less true 
in all ages of the world. And still, as at first. His 
rejecters are sometimes those whom we should expect 
to see receiving Him most eagerly. We, dear friends, 
may deceive and mislead ourselves, just as multitudes 
of Christ's " own " have done in former ages. Like 
them, we may picture to our minds what Christ will 
be when He comes ; and then reject Him, at His com- 
ing, because so different from what we had pictured. 
Undoubtedly there are many false Christs, whom men 



SONS OF GOD THROUGH CHRIST. 21 

believe in while rejecting the true Christ. The Scrip- 
ture says, " Judge not, that ye be not judged ; " and I 
do not propose at this time to judge any man ; but 
may I not turn inward, upon each one of our spirits, 
that light which there is in the text, thus making it, 
to us all, a revealer of our condition before God ? 

Of how many of us can it be truly said that Christ 
" has given us power to become the sons of God " ? 
This question may be answered by determining how 
many of us have received Christ. What is He ? and 
what is it to receive Him? These are the decisive 
inquiries. 

Some of us, who hope that we have received Christ, 
may have mistaken something else for Him. Our 
Christ may be more or less a fiction of our own minds, 
into agreement with which we wrest the Scriptures, 
rather than the real Christ which the Scriptures offer 
us. In one respect we are worse off than those who 
lived in the time of Christ. Their false views of Him, 
which they had cherished in advance of His coming, 
were disproved by His actual appearance. But we 
may live on, holding fast to a wrong opinion of Him, 
nor have our error corrected till we meet Him in 
judgment. Our first great need, then, in making up 
our minds what Christ is, is an unprejudiced and 
docile spirit. We must not come to Him with some 
preconceived theory, or system of doctrine, and look 
at Him through that distorting medium ; but we must 
let Him come to us, and must see Him as He is. He 
is a Saviour. " Thou shalt call His name Jesus," 
said the angel ; " for He shall save His people from 
their sins." He is the Atoner, the Reconciler of the 
world to God. An instructor into all morality, yet 
not a moralist. A teacher of profound doctrine, yet 



22 SERMONS. 

no framer of doctrinal systems. He came to do a 
work rather than deliver a message. That He spoke 
the truth, is not His grand peculiarity, but that He 
was the truth. " In Him was life, and the life was the 
light of men." He was the " first-born of every crea- 
ture " ; that is, the first instance of a perfect divine 
sonship in humanity. This preeminence among His 
brethren was witnessed to when the Spirit descended 
like a dove upon Him, and the voice out of heaven 
said, " This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well 
pleased." What the Father desires in men is, that 
they should feel as He feels respecting their sinful- 
ness. It is their sin which awakens the wrath of a 
holy God ; and the moment they abhor their sin, pre- 
cisely as He abhors it, that moment He lays by His 
anger. "If we confess our sins. He is faithful and 
just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all 
unrighteousness." But no man is equal to this confes- 
sion in his own strength. He must have One to inter- 
cede, and to confess for him. Now here it is that we 
find that by which Christ is made a Saviour to us. He 
is that, in sinful humanity, which the holy Father 
must find in order to forgive sin. By His infinite 
sympathy He enters into all our sad state, and bears 
upon His heart the burden of our sins, though Him- 
self without sin. He is the perfect and holy Son of 
God in humanity ; and He responds for us, as we can- 
not for ourselves, to that condemnation which has 
gone forth against us. He feels as our Brother what 
God feels as our Father, in view of our sinfulness. 
And that feeling, on the ground of His brotherhood 
with us, is accepted as our feeling ; accepted, that is, 
so far as we, by choosing to partake in it, become the 
sons of God. This Son, obedient unto death, His 



SONS OF GOD THROUGH CHRIST. 23 

sonship proved by His sufferings, is the Christ of the 
Scriptures. " Lo, I come to do thy will, O God ! " 
" No man cometh to the Father but by me." " No 
man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom 
the Son shall reveal Him." The Christ, therefore, 
whom we are to receive, is this perfect Son of God 
and human brother ; this filial Spirit in humanity, in 
perfect agreement with God's Fatherliness, — His con- 
fession as our Brother a perfect Amen to God's con- 
demnation as our Father. Can you conceive Christ 
in this relation to you? Perhaps not clearly. No 
doubt I fail to present Him adequately. But the 
intellectual apprehension is not necessary. It comes 
after, rather than before, the time at which we are 
made sons of God. But there is one light in which 
you can understand Christ ; that is, as the procurer of 
salvation for you. It is as doing this for you that you 
must apprehend Him, or you cannot receive Him. To 
accomplish this work, it is, that He becomes the sin- 
less Son in sinful humanity ; the bearer and confessor 
of all our sin, who did no sin ; pouring out His soul 
unto death, that He might be to us the resurrection 
and the life. 

And what is it to receive this holy, suffering 
Saviour? — this Son of man, our perfect Brother; 
this Son of God, our reconciler to a justly offended 
Father? To receive Him is more than to admire 
Him. Many shall say unto Him, " We have eaten 
and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in 
our streets." But He shall say, " I tell you, I know 
you not whence ye are." All must be filled with won- 
der and subdued to tears at the sight of the pure Son 
of God veiling HimseK in corruptible flesh ; owning 
as His brethren, before the Father, those with whom 



24 SERiMONS. 

tlie Father is so deeply and justly offended ; and mak- 
ing confession of their sin, that He may be to them a 
way of reunion with the Father. It is not in our 
power to be unmoved by such love, — a love in which 
the hearts of the Father and Son are revealed in per- 
fect accord, — a love which shows that the Father is 
ready to forgive the moment we make confession, and 
in which the Son makes confession for us because of 
our infirmity. 

To receive this Christ is to let Him do for us that 
which He came to do. And this " letting," on our 
part, involves a free and earnest choice. We must 
choose to take that which He waits to give. We are 
not dealing with fate, but with love. You do not let 
Christ do for you what He came to do, while you are 
indifferent, — while you say, " I will take no further 
concern for myself, but leave all to Him." He does 
not come in through the bolted door ; only those who 
hear His voice and open the door sup with Him, and 
He with them. There must be the perceiving eye, the 
hearing ear, the understanding heart, the consenting 
will. You have heard men object to prayer, on the 
ground that God will bestow all He intends to without 
our asldng : " to ask Him," it is said, " is to doubt 
His love." Not so. For that asking is the response 
of a child's love to a father's love. It brings the 
minds of the receiver and giver into sympathy, and 
this sympathy is the channel through which the bless- 
ing flows. The rain of divine grace descends on the 
just and the unjust, but only the just have power to 
receive it. The sun of God's love shines on the evil 
and the good ; but to the evil, whose souls are closed 
up, that light of love is only darkness. Thus it is 
that there must be on our part a choosing of Christ, 



SONS OF GOD THROUGH CHRIST. 25 

— a choosing Him to be our Confessor into the Father, 
to be our ]3erfect sonship in humanity until we are 
introduced into the hberty of the sons of God. You 
do not " receive " a physician until you yield yourself 
to him as a physician. And so you do not receive 
Christ until you choose Him as your peace with God, 
as fulfilling for you that perfect duty of a son toward 
God, of which you are yourself effectually incapable. 
It was this inward, spiritual reception of Christ, not 
the outward hospitality, which made Zaccheus " a son 
of Abraham." In this inward sense Clu^ist was 
rejected by great multitudes, who followed Him, and 
entertained Him in their houses. We are to observe 
that He made only two classes of all men. Such dis- 
tinctions as Jew and gentile, learned and unlearned, 
rich and poor, Pharisee and publican, were nothing to 
Him. None who rejected Him as a perfect Son and 
Brother to deal with the Father on their behalf, but 
only those who received Him, and believed on His 
name as that whereby they might be saved, had power 
given them to become the sons of God. All profes- 
sions, and pretensions, and preconceived theories, and 
intellectual systems went for nothing. On one side is 
put every rejecter and on the other side every receiver 
of this Procurer of salvation for us ; and unto these 
latter alone it is that Christ is made a reconciling 
Brother, to bring us nigh unto the Father, whom we 
have forsaken. 

Yes, He gives to all such "power to become the 
sons of God." In one sense, as I have said, no man 
has ever ceased to be a son of God ; for God is called 
" the Father of the spirits of all flesh." Saint Paul, 
reasoning with the unbelieving Athenians, taught them 
that they were "God's offspring." It is probable 



26 SERMONS. 

that the Lord's Prayer was given to the disciples 
before they had entered into any new experience of 
sonship. Yet in that prayer they are taught to say, 
" Our Father." And it seems to me that we must 
recognize this child's capacity in all men, or we can 
cherish no hope of the recovery of men to God. 
There must be a susceptibility which can receive the 
life which there is in Christ ; something which was 
dead, but which can be made alive again ; a capacity 
of which we are unconscious, but which it is one office 
of Christ to quicken within us, until we shall sigh for 
a reunion with the Father. No new thing is created 
in the prodigal ; but when he comes to himself — wak- 
ens up thoroughly to what he already is — he arises, 
and seeks the Father's arms. There is something in 
every individual of humanity, which, in reference to 
the life in Christ, is akin to the capacity of the branch 
to receive the life in the vine. Christ teaches us that 
it is through the action of the eternal Spirit that He 
is kept in this near relation to every soul. This Spirit 
was promised in connection with His departure from 
the earth, impressing the blessed truth that He is 
always present spiritually. The true vine continues 
to be in the world until all the branches which receive 
its life are made fruitful, — bearing the same fruit of 
obedience which He bore throughout the days of His 
suffering. The quickening life in Him, through the 
eternal Spirit, is ever seeking an entrance into our 
spirits ; it is ever pressing against the inmost door of 
our hearts ; and when we admit it, we enter into the 
same relation to God in which He stands. We, in our 
lapsed and sinful condition, have lost our conscious- 
ness of the filial feeling. The capacity is stiU in us, 
but it needs to be quickened. God calls to each one 



SONS OF GOD THROUGH CHRIST. 27 

of us, saying, " My son," but there is nothing in us 
which says in response, "* My Father." This power 
to respond to the feeling of the Father's heart is what 
Christ gives. As soon as we receive Him, — as soon 
as our spirits are opened, by faith in Him, to take in 
that light of life which He is longing to impart, — the 
orphan feeling leaves us. The spirit of the child is 
wakened out of its sleep within us, is raised from the 
dead, and we cry, " Abba, Father," to the voice of 
God which addresses us as children. It is at first a 
feeble, infantile cry ; the cry of a spirit just born out 
of darkness into the light of a Father's love. Yet the 
sense of loneliness, and of distance from God, is gone. 
The relation between father and child is restored ; 
and, as the consciousness of that relation deepens, the 
cry, "Abba, Father," becomes more articulate and 
full. Thus, in a manner, is it that Christ gives as 
many as receive Him power to become the sons of 
God. He gives them the power. They have it in 
themselves to exercise under the control of their own 
will. They receive it as the branches receive sap from 
the vine, as all the members of the body receive a 
vitalizing energy from the head and heart. But it is 
their own through their abiding in Christ, and in the 
free exercise of it they become sons of God. The 
consciousness of a filial relation to God grows within 
them till they are filled by it. They have always been 
His offspring, but never before consciously such. That 
in them which was dead is alive again : it was lost, 
and is found. 

Now, dear friends, if we have experienced this in- 
ward quickening, — if Christ, through the eternal 
Spirit, has given us the power to say, " Our Father," 
when we hear God calling us His children, — what is 



28 . SERMONS. 

our evidence ? It is the consciousness of being faith- 
ful to the duties of this new relation of sonship. " The 
Spirit witnesseth with our spirit that we are the chil- 
dren of God." There is a loving confidence estab- 
lished between our hearts and the divine heart which 
we feel to be mutual. God, though grievously sinned 
against, is our friend and Father ; and we come to 
Him with a child's open heart, confessing all, acknowl- 
edging all, grieving in His grief over our wickedness, 
and yielding ourselves with a full response to His own 
yearning, that He may make us pure even as He is 
pure. We have a perfect example of what this son- 
ship is, in the life of Christ. It was His delight to 
do His Father's will. In Him the spirit of the child 
was never absent or dormant. It responded constantly 
to the spirit of the Father. He and the Father were 
one ; He in the Father, and the Father in Him. The 
life of sonship in Him, I say, was perfect. He viewed 
all things just as God viewed them ; felt as God felt ; 
wished what God wished, with this only difference, — 
that He felt as a Son, and God as a Father, in refer- 
ence to all things. We cannot expect this perfect 
evidence, being ourselves imperfect ; but we can have 
it in our measure. There is something in the feeblest 
cry of His own child which the Father can distinguish 
from any cry of an alien ; and there is something in 
the feeblest child's heart which distinguishes its own 
Father's voice from all other voices. " My sheep hear 
my voice, and follow me ; but a stranger will they not 
follow, for they know not the voice of a stranger." 
We know, dear friends, how the sonship of the all- 
perfect Son was manifested. " He humbled Himself, 
and became obedient unto death, even the death of 
the cross ; " " As a Son, learned He obedience through 



SONS OF GOD THROUGH CHRIST. 29 

suffering." He entered into all the Father's yearn- 
ings over His lost family on the earth. He entered 
into that lapsed humanity, and, through the eternal 
Spirit, is still in it as a quickening and restoring power. 
He goes before the Father for us with that perfect 
confession to which we are unequal ; and thus the 
Father's displeasure is turned away from us. What 
God must find in humanity, in order that His wrath 
toward us may cease, is a perfect response to His own 
feelings in view of sin. And He finds that response 
in Christ. And Christ not only makes that response 
for us, but He gives us power to make it ourselves. 
He quickens in us that child-feeling toward God, which 
is dead ; and so we, following Him in the regenera- 
tion, enter into all God's feelings toward our sinful 
race, — our voice of confession, in its measure, re- 
sponding to His voice of condemnation ; our whole 
lives being one unbroken endeavor to do for sinning 
and sorrowing men what Christ did for them, who 
felt and did for them as a Brother just what God felt 
and did for them as a Father. Thus to be one with 
the Father and Son, loving righteousness and hating 
iniquity ; condemning all sin and striving after all 
holiness ; laboring when we may, and suffering when 
we must, to make this mind of the Father manifest to 
all men, that they also may believe on the name of 
Christ, — this is the evidence that we have received 
power to become the sons of God. " As many as are 
led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God." 
Just such a spirit as was in Christ, just such a life as 
He lived, — differing only as its circumstances, exi- 
gencies, and opportunities differ, — belongs to every 
soul which has been quickened toward God, so as to be 
able to look up into His face and cry, " Abba, Father." 



30 SERMONS. 

All such, but no others, as we are taught in the 
closing words of the text, " have been born, not of 
blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, 
but of God." This birth of God is mysterious, as all 
life, whether of matter or spirit, is mysterious in its 
beginnings. No soul should expect to be able to real- 
ize perfectly all the steps in the process by which it 
passes from death to life. It should be content to be 
without this knowledge, if so blessed as to find the 
evidence that it is in the life. " The wind bloweth 
where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof ; 
but thou canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither 
it goeth : so is every one that is born of the Spirit." 
" Thou hearest the sound thereof." Yes, dear brother, 
let that suffice. Hearing in your own heart the re- 
sponse to the voice of the Father's heart, having in 
you the same spirit of sympathy with man and obe- 
dience to God which Christ had, seek not curiously to 
lay open the sources of this new life. Say rather, 
with the man whose eyes were opened, " One thing I 
know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see." And let 
that seeing — that walking in the light of God — be 
all your joy and the crown of your rejoicing. Possibly 
some of you, while listening to these remarks, have 
heard described an experience in which you cannot 
truly say that you have ever shared. If so ; if you 
have never as dear children met the mind of the 
Father, and responded with the voice of sonship to 
the voice of His f atherliness, — then are you still " in 
the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity." All your 
knowledge of mystery, and your faith in articles of 
doctrine, are nothing. You must do your first works. 
You must bring forth fruits meet for repentance. God 
looketh not on the outward appearance, — the respect- 



SONS OF GOD THROUGH CHRIST. 31 

able profession ; He looketli on the heart. He watches 
that heart to see in it a child's face reflecting back 
every feeling depicted in His own. And if there be 
any hearts here in which He discerns that filial like- 
ness, they are His, and nothing shall separate them 
from His love. Have you received Christ? Is His 
holy life of obedience to the Father formed within 
your life? Can you say, and do you love to say, 
" Father, thy will be done," whatever the burden be 
that is laid upon you ? Then do not doubt, however 
feeble you seem to yourself at times to be, that you 
have power, — power to enter more and more into the 
consciousness of sonship toward God. He who was 
touched with the feeling of your infirmities, watches 
over that feeble flame in your soul. Though often- 
times choked with doubt. He will not suffer it to be 
quenched. If you believe. He will help your unbelief. 
He came that you might have life, and that you might 
have it more abundantly. Harbor not any longer the 
dreary sense of orphanage. If you can truly, and in 
the depths of your soul, call God Father, then are 
you indeed His quickened child. Nor should you hide 
the light of this new life under a bushel, but put it 
on the candlestick of an open profession, that it may 
give light to all in the house. 

Brethren in the ministry of the gospel, let us be- 
think ourselves, in the light of this subject, what is 
the nature and purpose of our holy calling. Christ 
labored, and we have entered into His labors. It is 
ours, after Him, to give unto others the power to be- 
come sons of God. That quickening energy, whose 
fountain-head was in Him, flows on through us unto 
the end of the world. "He that receiveth you re- 
ceiveth me, and He that receiveth me receiveth Him 



32 SERMONS. 

that sent me," was His saying when He sent forth the 
disciples to teach and preach. '' Lord, to whom shall 
we go ? thou hast the words of eternal life," was 
Peter's confession ; and we are to utter " words of 
eternal life," until those who listen to us shall be con- 
strained to confess in like manner. As Christ said, 
so must we be able to say, " The words which I speak 
unto you, they are spirit and life." Thus to speak is 
our divine commission, — kindling our torches at the 
central fire, and bearing them outward till the dark 
places of the earth are no more full of the habitations 
of cruelty, but filled with light, even the love of dear 
children of God. " The works which I do, shall ye 
do," said Christ ; " and greater works than these shall 
ye do, because I go unto the Father." That life-giv- 
ing life which was in Him, and which He has given 
us, we must give to others ; until every soul of man 
shall awake, and arise from the dead, and join with 
us in the glad cry, " Abba, Father." Our preaching 
must have in it this life-giving life to the spirits of 
men, else how can it be the gospel of reconciliation, 
the glad tidings of great joy to all people ? What- 
ever it may fail of giving, oh let it not fail to give, to 
as many as receive us, power to become the sons of 
God. I have no word to utter against the graces of 
style, the charms of delivery, or the weight of argu- 
ment ; but it is the savor of eternal life, breathed 
through our discourse and through all our minister- 
ing, that will quicken, and draw on to their Father's 
arms. His own children, now lost and dead, to whom 
we are sent. " And I, brethren, when I came to you, 
came not with excellency of speech," said the great 
apostle. And again he said, " The kingdom of God is 
not in word, but in power." Since the words which 



SONS OF GOD THROUGH CHRIST. 33 

we speak are not mere words, but " spirit and life," 
our exercise of this ministry should be to us a very 
serious and real matter. None of the arts of speech, 
such as are known to the platform and forum, become 
us ; no efforts to persuade men save those which rise 
out of the living truth in us. No fire, no earthquake, 
in which God is not, but His still small voice, speak- 
ing through ours, is that which shall cause the world 
to hide its face in a mantle ; is that which shall enable 
us to reach the hearts of our Father's lost children, 
and return, after the Captain of our salvation, who 
was made perfect through suffering, bringing many 
sons with us into glory. 



THE STRUCTURE OF THE EPISTLE TO THE 

ROMANS. 

I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, both to the 
wise and to the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach 
the Gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of 
the Gospel of Christ : for it is the power of God unto salvation to 
every one that believeth ; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For 
therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith : as it 
is written. The just shall live by faith. — Romaks i. 14-17. 

We are familiar with the work of Philip Doddridge 
entitled " The Rise and Progress of Religion in the 
Soul." But that treatise, faithful as it is to Christian 
experience, has often seemed to me to stand immeas- 
urably behind the Epistle to the Romans, in its own 
chosen department ; as a record of the successive 
stages of the new life in Christ, it is far less exhaus- 
tive and powerful. We are wont to regard the Epistle 
to the Romans too much in the light of a theological 
essay ; we get bewildered in its intricacies of speech, 
its cumulative restatements and long, double parenthe- 
ses : and then, assuming that we are studying only a 
doctrinal discussion, we turn for relief to what are 
sometimes termed the simpler and more practical 
books of inspiration. Now this impression of diffi- 
culty in the Romans, excepting in some of the details, 
— this impression, though very general and sanctioned 
by a few distinguished names, should not be admitted 
too hastily. I am greatly mistaken if this is not the 
most thoroughly experimental, and the most intensely 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 35 

practical, of all the apostle's writings. It is ad- 
dressed to professing Christians mainly, and assumes 
that they have been thoroughly regenerated ; and if 
we of the present day fail to understand it, the fact is 
sadly significant that the church has lapsed from the 
primitive standard of piety. As has been well said,^ 
" Everything in the Epistle wears so strongly the im- 
press of the greatest originality, liveliness, and fresh- 
ness of experience ; the apostle casts so sure and 
clear a glance into the most delicate circumstances of 
spiritual life in the regenerate ; he can with such ad- 
mirable clearness resolve the particular into the gen- 
eral, — that the reader who occupies the low and con- 
fined level of natural, worldly knowledge, now feels his 
brain reel as he gazes at those stupendous periods of 
development in the universe disclosed by Paul, and 
now finds his vision fail as it contemplates the minute 
and microscopic processes which Paul unveils in the 
hidden depth of the soul. Where, however, analogous 
inward experience, and the spiritual eye sharpened 
thereby, come to the task, the essential purport of the 
Epistle makes itself clear, even to the simj)lest mind." 
As we become more profoundly conscious of the inner 
life with Christ, and read this letter to the Romans 
attentively, we shall be persuaded, I think, that it is 
an enthusiastic portrayal of the writer's own expe- 
rience — that it belono^s in the same class of writino's 
with Augustine's Confessions, the Pilgrim's Progress, 
and the Saint's Everlasting Rest. As the Bishop of 
Hippo wrote out the history of his soul in his own 
name, as Bunyan seems only to depict his own spirit- 
ual life in the story of the Pilgrim, and as Baxter 
drew from liis own heart the material for his precious 

1 By Olshausen. 



36 SERMONS. 

volume, so Paul in writing this Epistle — though his 
pen was guided by the Holy Ghost, and he often 
changes the particular into the general, and the con- 
crete into the abstract — seems all along to be con- 
ducting his readers through the depths and windings 
of his own Christian experience. The preeminent 
value of the Epistle, as it seems to me, and that to 
which I invite your attention this morning, is the fact 
that it discloses, in its very plan and structure, the 
history of God's gracious dealings with a human soul. 
It begins with the beginning, and ends with the end, 
of a genuine work of grace in the heart ; it gives us 
first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in 
the ear, — the root, the stem, and the branches, and 
that, toq, in their proper order and vital connections. 

Let it be borne in mind that the apostle has for 
nearly a quarter of a century been a believer in 
Christ. The most arduous of his missionary labors 
are already accomplished. He is at Corinth on his 
second visit, the irregularities and divisions of the 
church in that city having at length been healed. It 
is the eve of his departure for Jerusalem to carry the 
gifts, contributed by the churches of Achaia, to the 
impoverished Christians of Palestine. He seems to 
have anticipated visiting the brethren in Rome before 
turning his face eastward again ; and now, finding 
himself unable to do so, and having an opportunity to 
send them a message, he sits down at the last moment 
to dictate for them a letter of paternal fellowship and 
affection. The design of the Epistle is such as natu- 
rally to turn his thoughts toward himself. He feels 
that he is a veteran in the service of the Redeemer. 
The very effort to introduce himself to the Romans 
opens to his mind the vistas of the past. He beholds, 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 37 

winding up through the avenues of memory, all the 
way in which Christ has led him, — from the first fiery 
experience in the road to Damascus, on over the three 
years of retirement in Arabia, into the persecutions 
at Jerusalem, the opening successes of his ministry in 
Antioch, the repeated journeyings by sea and land to 
found and nurture Christian churches throughout 
western Asia and the cities of Greece ; and from this 
summit of mighty achievement, and attainments in 
holiness, — taking no credit to himseK, but ascribing 
all to the wonderful love of Christ, — his soul gushes 
out in the language of joyful thanksgiving. Over- 
whelmed by his emotions in view of the divine mercy 
toward him, and eager, as ever, to show by his noble 
toils that he is not ungrateful to his Saviour, he ex- 
claims, " I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the 
Barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise. So, 
as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel 
to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed 
of the gospel of Christ ; for it is the power of God 
unto salvation to every one that believeth ; to the Jew 
first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the right- 
eousness of God revealed from faith to faith ; as it is 
written, ' The just shall live by faith.' " 

Paul's personal experience, then, — his own redemp- 
tion in Christ Jesus, now in its final stages, — is the 
material out of which he constructs his Epistle to the 
Romans. And I propose now, dropping what is sub- 
ordinate to his main purpose, to represent, as far as I 
can, this process of salvation, which he has so won- 
drously delineated. 

1. The first great truth which the epistle sets forth 
is the apostasy of man from God. Nearly the whole 
of the three opening chapters is occupied with this 



38 ^ SERMONS. 

argument. It is a reverent, manly, and forever un- 
answerable statement. The apostle sets out with a 
very forcible vindication of the goodness of God, — 
no wickedness, chargeable against the human race, 
can throw back a shadow on His throne ; for He has 
revealed Himself to all men, making known His char- 
acter and will and their obligations, the heathen even 
being instructed out of their own conscience and exter- 
nal nature, so that every one, whether Jew or Gentile, 
is without excuse. Having thus made mankind alto- 
gether responsible for the condition they are in, he 
marshals in terrible array the evidences of their de- 
pravity. Beginning with the Pagan world, that he 
may not startle Jewish prejudice too soon, he leads up 
his readers to the bar of conscience ; and after they 
have listened to the awful condemnation of that judge, 
he turns their gaze outward on the barbarities, cruel- 
ties, and loathsome immoralities of the Greek and 
Roman cities. Then — knowing that he has by this 
time conciliated his Hebrew readers, who were always 
pleased with any denunciation of the unchosen nations 
— he turns the argument, with twofold weight, against 
the Jews themselves. Taking them upon their own 
ground, which was the Scriptures of the Old Testa- 
ment, he piles text upon text, and overwhelms them 
with thick-coming interrogatories and appeals, till they 
are brought down into the dust side by side with all 
other sinners, their guilt eating into them like robes 
of fire, and an impassable gulf yawning between them 
and the holy God. 

Now, why is Paul so fearfully in earnest here, — 
why, instead of kindly sparing his friends at Rome, 
does he so lacerate their sensibilities by making them 
appear hideous in their own eyes, — if this sad truth 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 39 

of apostasy be not fundamental in any plan for sav- 
ing men ? To cause unnecessary pain — to bruise 
the human heart, and cover it with remorse, merely 
for the sake of the thing — is a refinement in cruelty 
of which the gentle-souled apostle to the Gentiles was 
utterly incapable. Yet it is the opening announce- 
ment in his fraternal letter to the Romans. He lays 
it down as the foundation, from which the other parts 
of the epistle, like the walls and towers of some noble 
temple, rise in their proper order. The fact that he 
chooses this as the corner-stone of the building he is 
rearing, and that he presents the truth in such thor- 
oughness and compacted intensity, points to the begin- 
nings of his own renewal in Christ Jesus. He con- 
siders it indispensable that men should see themselves 
undone and helpless, for it was in this conviction that 
his own new life had its source. Following his expe- 
rience backward, as he so often has more manifestly 
in other places, — especially in his last address at 
Jerusalem, and in his defense before Agrippa, where 
he details with striking minuteness the circumstances 
of his conversion, — going back to those three days 
of agony in Damascus, he regards that dreadful con- 
sciousness of guilt as the foundation of all his attain- 
ments in holiness. No other supposition can clear up 
the mystery hanging about these first chapters of the 
epistle ; can explain why it was that the kind-hearted 
old missionary, in an affectionate letter, should pour 
forth such a torrent of accusation against his friends. 
It is the character of Saul of Tarsus that he is 
painting, — the bloody persecutor, who might stand as 
the universal representative of a sinner, since the Jew- 
ish and Gentile elements were about equally blended 
in his parentage and training. What we read else- 



40 SERMONS. 

where — of the light above the noonday brightness, 
of the voice saying, " Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou 
me ? " of the three days and nights of blindness, and 
of the bitter conflicts of soul in the mean time — is 
only repeated here in a different form. The apostle 
knows that as in water face answers to face, so the 
heart of man to man. He knows, if the people of 
Rome are ever saved, that their redemption must be- 
gin in the same way as his own. They miist be smitten 
down as he was smitten, and feel such agonies as drove 
him to the verge of despair. Therefore he dips his 
pen deep in the fountains of his own spiritual history. 
It is Saul of Tarsus still, only changed from the par- 
ticular into the general, whose features he lays out on 
the canvas till we start back from it in guilty alarm, 
beholding in it the faithful picture of our own souls 
as they appear in the sight of God. 

2. We now pass to the second main object of the 
epistle, which is to shut men up to faith in Christ as 
the way of salvation. This topic, together with the 
many subordinate discussions, and beautiful threads 
of thought and sentiment interwoven all along, occu- 
pies more than eight chapters, reaching from near the 
close of the third to the end of the eleventh. It 
presents the remedy for the disease just pointed out ; 
and the space devoted to the prescription shows how 
much more the apostle was bent on rescuing men than 
on merely convincing them of their guilt. Having 
begotten in them a consciousness of their lost and 
miserable state, he proceeds to answer the question 
which it is natural that each one of them should raise, 
— " How shall I escape from the body of this death ? " 
In what way shall apostate man be brought back to 
God? He does not go into an examination of the 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 41 

Pagan worships, to show their inadequacy for this 
purpose, since most of his readers were already 
guarded in that direction ; but taking up the Jewish 
worship, and the systems of morality, he shows that 
in these no justifying power can be found for the 
sinner. First, we behold the self-righteous Pharisee 
— a picture for which the young man Saul, the pupil 
of Gamaliel, evidently sat — going about to establish 
himself in favor with God. The apostle does not 
allow him any rest in his legalism, but chases him 
from one hiding-place to another, showing him that 
he has misunderstood the Mosaic sacrifices, which 
were only a foreshadowing of Christ crucified ; point- 
ing out the unfitness of any mere ceremonies to please 
a holy God ; proving that Abraham was not justified 
by the works of the law ; confronting the deluded 
formalist with his many shortcomings ; showing the 
righteous man that his very righteousness is full of 
sin, that there is a burden of past transgressions 
resting upon him, and that he has an evil nature 
rooting back into the progenitor of the race. He de- 
scribes, in language that burns and flames, the strug- 
gle between the lower and higher nature in the soul 
of the moralist. That poor man is resolved to live a 
perfect life, but though the spirit is willing the flesh 
is weak. When he would do good, evil is present 
with him. Notwithstanding all his strivings and cau- 
tions, his life does not come up to the moral stand- 
ard ; and the consciousness of failure discourages and 
maddens him, so that the law becomes to him the 
minister of sin. His high resolve, though ordained 
unto life, tends only to despair, apathy, and death. 
This ever-failing effort is depicted in the sixth chap- 
ter, and nearly through the seventh ; when the exult- 



42 SERMONS. 

ant writer, having swept away all the theories of 
creature-merit and self-redemption, looks up out of 
the tumbling wreck he has made, and exclaims, " I 
thank God for deliverance through the Lord Jesus 
Christ." The great thing and the only thing for us 
to do, in order that we may be restored to the embraces 
of the Father, is to trust ourselves unquestioningly 
in the hands of Christ. Oh, how the apostle's soul 
mounts aloft, after bringing his readers to this glo- 
rious truth ! It is the heaven-piercing summit of his 
mighty argument, over which he hovers, and round 
which he circles and sails, brushing against it with 
ardent wing, reposing himself upon it, and wearing 
its splendors through all that he has to say of guilt, 
the law, conflicts, unfaithful Israel, the election of 
God, and a holy life. The eighth chapter, in which 
he pours forth his gladness and thanksgivings, is an 
unparalleled specimen of fervid and soaring eloquence. 
How calm, yet triumphing, the opening sentence ! — 
" There is therefore now no condemnation to them 
which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the 
flesh, but after the spirit ; for the law of the spirit of 
life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law 
of sin and death." " Hath made me free " is the 
glorious thought which swells and resounds through- 
out the chapter. The remembrance of that blessed 
relief, which rolled into his soul like sweet waters 
when he found himself in the keeping of Christ, is so 
mighty that it throws him off his guard. He cannot 
hide his personality while such recollections are heav- 
ing his breast. Swimming in the tide of this delicious 
excitement, he forgets his more general purpose ; and 
we behold the new-born disciple, in the moment when 
there fell as it were scales from his eyes, standing 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 43 

before us in all the simplicity of a babe in Christ, and 
declarins: what God has done for his soul. Once he 
roamed, and was tossed about on the dark ocean of 
guilt. Pie had tried morality, he tried conformity to 
the Mosaic rites ; but they brought no safety : the 
storm still buffeted him, and he could find no way to a 
landing-place. But at length he found Christ, who is 
the end of the law for righteousness to every one that 
belie veth. He heard that voice — so tlirilling and ten- 
der — saying, " Come unto Me, I will give you rest." 
Have no more concern about your peace with God, but 
leave it all to me. Accept me for your Saviour, to de- 
liver you from punishment, and from your fears and 
sins, and to restore you, a purified soul, to the arms of 
the Holy One. This was just the aid that Paul needed. 
It was a peaceful harbor, close beside him, in which he 
might moor his failing bark. He gave over the idea 
of self-help ; and, trusting himself utterly and forever 
in Christ's hands, he ceased to strive. He reposed his 
weary heart on that gentle bosom. He gave himself up 
to those blissful emotions which naturally arose while 
feeling that all his care had been cast on a divine 
Redeemer. Nothing but his own lofty utterances can 
describe the joy of his soul : " Who shall separate us 
from the love of Christ ? Shall tribulation, or distress, 
or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or sword? 
As it is written. For thy sake we are killed all the 
day long ; we are accounted as sheep for the slaugh- 
ter. Nay, in all these things we are more than con- 
querors through Him that loved us. For I am per- 
suaded, that neither death nor life, nor angels nor 
principalities, nor powers, nor things present nor 
things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other 
creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of 
God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 



44 SERMONS. 

3. The remainder of the epistle, excepting the salu- 
tations in the last chapter, is devoted to the inculca- 
tion of the Christian virtues. And it is important, 
especially for those who object to the doctrine of gratu- 
itous salvation, to see how Paul grafts these virtues 
into the very act of faith in Christ. So far from 
granting us any Hcense, as though we might be care- 
less about our morals since Christ is our Saviour, he 
no sooner ends the exultant narrative of his justifica- 
tion by faith than he calls out, " I beseech you there- 
fore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present 
your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto 
God, which is your reasonable service." It does not 
occur to him that there is any conflict between his 
doctrine of faith and a holy life. He passes from 
one to the other with a simple " therefore," unaware 
of abruptness, perceiving no antagonism or incongru- 
ity. The stream of thought flows on uninterruptedly, 
— from conviction of sin to faith in Christ, and from 
faith to good works. " Ye were once apostate from 
God. A deep guK lay between you and Him, and 
you found no way of reaching His side. But Christ, 
the great Mediator, — who bridges the chasm and 
destroys the enmity, — has now taken you into His 
keeping. Trusting yourselves utterly to Him, you 
have no further care respecting your destiny ; but 
may calmly wait the revelations of the future, knowing 
that He will present you faultless before His Father. 
Therefore be not worldly, but of a heavenly mind ; 
show in all your conduct what is the perfect will of 
God ; think soberly, each one, of his personal impor- 
tance ; find out and perform the special Christian 
labor to which the Master has assigned you ; be under 
the control of a steady and undissembled love ; dill- 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 45 

gent, fervent, hopeful, patient, beneficent, forgiving, 
sympathetic, forbearing, lovers of peace, honorable, 
humble, unresentful, overcoming evil with good ; re- 
spect the civil authority, so far as it is the minister of 
God ; have that universal love out of which all the 
specific Christian graces spring ; deny yourselves, even 
where your own conscience does not urge to the sacri- 
fice, rather than be a stumbling-block to some weaker 
brother ; remember that it is the duty of the strong, 
not to please themselves, but to help the weak ; pray 
without ceasing, — for me, for one another, and for all 
men." Faith, then, — that faith which Paul recom- 
mends, and which puts the soul in the keeping of 
Christ its Saviour, — is not an unworking sentiment, 
but includes in it all that is holy and beautiful in 
character. When a child has wandered off into the 
wilderness and is lost; when, having yielded to de- 
spair after repeated but fruitless endeavors to find the 
way home, it at length hears a mother's voice echoing 
through the gloomy forest, — if that child is really sick 
of its roaming, if it truly longs to return, and in sin- 
cerity yields itself to that loving call, — earnestness 
and action possess it at once. It does not lie still, 
carelessly saying, " I have faith in my mother ; she 
will save me, and therefore I need do nothing." He 
starts up straightway, answers the voice, ascertains its 
direction, and presses eagerly toward it. Just so it 
was with the great apostle ; and so it is with all who 
sincerely trust in Jesus. We have strayed, like lost 
sheep, into the wilderness of the world. The Holy 
Ghost comes, startling us from our lethargy, and 
showing us that we are lost wanderers ; and then it is 
that we turn to morality, and to the external forms 
and duties of religion, for peace with God. But these 



46 SERMONS. 

have no power to rescue us ; they only increase the 
dreadful bewilderment. Then we hear the voice of 
the Shepherd, full of all the sweetness and pathos of 
a mother's love, borne into the still depths of the 
woods, and saying, " Fear not ; I am thy righteous- 
ness ; trust all to Me, and I will bring thee home." 
And if we heartily believe in that Saviour, we do not 
indolently stay where we are, but rise up, exclaiming 
eagerly, " Lord, show us the way, that we walk in it." 
Our faith causes us to follow after Him, and He goes 
on before us ; and though we see Him not, yet we hear 
Him, bidding us do this and refrain from that ; and 
these command Qients are the way along which He 
leads us to our Father's house. The path is very 
various in its appearance, not direct though strait and 
narrow, turning now hither and now thither, yet always 
leading heavenward. Here is the path of Humility, 
and out of that we go into one which bears the name 
of Self-sacrifice ; and beyond that is the way of Well- 
doing ; and then come such as Family Prayer, Hon- 
esty in Business, Liberality, Charity, a Meek and 
Quiet Spirit, Secret Devotion, Meditation, Study of 
God's Word, Keeping the Covenant, Adorning the 
Doctrine of our Saviour. These are the titles, set up at 
the entrances and corners all the way ; and if we have 
that faith which puts us in Christ's keeping, we shall 
not shrink at any stage of the journey, however steep, 
or slippery, or dismal it may seem : we shall hear the 
voice of one behind us, speaking to us and saying, 
" This is the way, walk ye in it ; " and we shall follow 
hard after the divine Pattern who has gone before 
us, till at length that very faith, which led us to con- 
fide everything to the Redeemer, shall develop in our 
life whatsoever is honest and lovely and of good 



EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 47 

report, and if there be any virtue or any praise. As 
I contemplate the experience of the noble apostle, 
which is the substance and soul of this epistle, it seems 
to me like some fair and thrifty tree, — erect, crowned 
with a broad coronal of green, and loaded with golden 
fruitage. In the first three chapters we discover its 
root, which is the awful sense of guilt, wide-spreading 
and thrust far down into the soil of conscience ; out 
of this, not arbitrarily, but by the beautiful force of 
nature, springs the living trunk of faith in a crucified 
Redeemer ; and as the root, which was penitence, un- 
folded into the trunk, which was faith, so faith, by 
the same blessed necessity, spreads out into an ample, 
and leafy, and fruit-laden covering, — the glorious 
canopy of a holy life made up of all the virtues and 
graces that are possible to a human soul. The struc- 
ture is threefold in its forms of development, and yet 
it is a single organism, dependent on a single life, from 
the lowest rootlet to the utmost and topmost branch. 
It is all wrapped up in the feeling of penitence, like 
the oak in the acorn, or like the flower in the seed. 
The conviction of sin, self-condemnation, a heart- 
crushing sense of guilt in the sight of God, is the one 
essential thing. From this our religious experience 
must spring, or it can never put on a glorious matu- 
rity. It is almost useless to preach Christ crucified, or 
to inculcate the moral and religious virtues, where this 
foundation — a broken and contrite spirit — has not 
been laid. But when He, whose office it is to convince 
of sin, righteousness, and judgment to come, — when 
He opens the closed eye of the soul, and draws around 
it in distinct outline the claims of the law of God, till 
we discover our helplessness, and begin to sink, like 
Simon Peter, in the tempestuous sea of guilt, — then, 



48 SERMONS. 

if we can discern tlie form of Christ coming toward 
us walking on the stormy billows, it is easy enough 
for our despair to change into absolute faith. And 
when He has stilled the tempest, and taken us in 
charge, and assured us that we have nothing more 
to be anxious about ; that He will see us moored at 
length in the haven of eternal rest, — then we are His 
to command, His to send whithersoever He will, His 
to bear such burdens as He may be pleased to lay 
upon us : and we would rather that our right hand 
should forget its cunning, and our tongue cleave unto 
the roof of our mouth, — rather that our heart should 
cease its beating, and we be laid under the clods of 
the valley, — than that we should ever shrink from the 
least of our obligations, or stain His name with the 
slightest dishonor. 



THE SUFFERING SAVIOUR. 

It pleased the Lord to bruise Him. — Isaiah liii. 10. 

The prophetic book in which these words are writ- 
ten is admitted to be Messianic. It foretells the suf- 
ferings and the glories of that coming Deliverer, the 
vision of whose kingdom had been the solace of God's 
people in all ages of the world. The personage here 
spoken of is that seed of the woman which should 
bruise the serpent's head : to Him Eve referred when 
she exclaimed with rapture, " I have gotten a man 
from the Lord." The bow in the cloud, assuring 
Noah that the world should not again be drowned, 
was the symbol of His peaceful reign. When God 
spoke to Abraham in Mount Moriah, saying, " Lay 
not thine hand on the lad," the patriarch knew that 
his son Isaac escaped by the procuring of another 
victim. " The Lord will provide," was his grateful 
exclamation. And the ram caught in the thicket 
was a type of the great sacrifice that should be offered 
once for all. The coming Deliverer, whom the text 
introduces to us as a bruised victim, is the same who 
went with the Israelites through the desert in His 
pillar of cloud and fire ; is that mighty Potentate 
whom the Psalmist repeatedly extols, now as the Son 
that should have the heathen for His inheritance, 
now as the God whose throne is forever and ever, 
always as a sovereign King, whose sceptre was a 
sceptre of righteousness, who had been anointed with 



60 SERMONS. 

the oil of gladness above His fellows, wlio should 
thresh the heathen in His indignation, to whom every 
knee should bow, and of whose government there 
should be no end. 

But in the scripture before us, all this regal splen- 
dor is wanting. The promised Messiah, laying aside 
His royal robes and the insignia of dominion, appears 
as "" the Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." 
He is the despised and rejected One. Those whom He 
comes to save hide their faces from Him. His visage 
is more marred than any man's. And that no bitter 
ingredient may be wanting in the full cup of suffer- 
ing which He drinks, it is declared that God afflicts 
Him ; and not only that, but that " it pleased the Lord 
to bruise Him." The suifering Saviour is therefore 
offered to us, in this scripture, as a theme for our 
meditations. And we shall be able to comprehend 
the meaning of the scripture somcAvhat, perhaps, if 
we consider Christ's sufferings under three heads ; 
namely, the fact, its wonderfulness, and the explana- 
tion of it. 

First, as to the fact : the force, as shown by re- 
corded history, of the fact that Christ suffered. Un- 
doubtedly this suffering had in it elements which we 
cannot fully know ; divine elements inappreciable to 
human sense, holy elements inappreciable to beings 
yet unholy. There is in all divine experiences some- 
thing which our minds cannot fully comprehend. 
"The love of God passeth knowledge." And when 
we speak of the divine nature as " suffering," it can- 
not be such suffering as we often experience, but such 
as consists with God's own immutable blessedness, — 
the suffering of infinite love and power, and therefore 
purely moral and voluntary in its nature, so that there 



THE SUFFERING SAVIOUR. 61 

may be in it, even while it does not cease to be suf- 
fering, an unspeakable joy and pleasure. Such was 
Christ's suffering ; a suffering full of divine blessed- 
ness, yet bearing down with its weight the poor hu- 
manity He took, so that no sorrow could be like His 
sorrow. This bruising wliich He underwent, we may 
know only in part. 

It began with His appearance in the flesh ; nay, 
before that, for He is " the Lamb slain from the foun- 
dation of the world ; " and it continued through all 
His life in the flesh, not growing less but greater and 
intenser, even to the last bitter hour on Calvary ; and 
an apostle intimates that even now, though exalted. 
He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. His 
throne is still but the throne of a mediatorial king- 
dom ; and mediation between sin and holiness cannot 
be real save as it involves suffering. But we need 
not go back to the ages before the incarnation, nor 
strive to peer within the veil where our great High 
Priest is now entered for us. There is enough, and 
more than enough, in the lot which Christ bore while 
in the flesh, to make good the prophetic picture of 
Him as the bruised and forsaken Man of grief. 

The circumvstances of His birth, — among strangers, 
at a public inn, while His parents were on a journey, 
objects of idle curiosity, no doubt also of pity and of 
scorn ; poor people, not admitted among the better- 
conditioned guests, but sheltered with the feeding- 
oxen, — here, at His very entrance on life, was some- 
thing of the nature of calamity ; a despised and un- 
friended lot, such as no man would choose for the 
hour of his nativity. I am sure that any one here, 
looking back on such scenes at his birth, would be 
saddened. Yet this is not the darkest ingredient in 



52 SERMONS, 

the cloud of sorrow that overspread Christ's infancy. 
Nor was the flight into Egypt, and the sojourning 
there in lowly obscurity, what especially marked His 
first years as troubled beyond the common lot. He 
could not think of those years without remembering 
the infants whom Herod had slain on His account, — 
" all the children in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts 
thereof, from two years old and under." Possibly it 
was the remembrance of this slaughter, this martyr- 
dom of the innocents for His sake, that made Him so 
especially tender toward little children through life ; 
taking them up in His arms, blessing them, saying that 
of such is the kingdom of heaven, and that it were 
better to be drowned in the sea than offend one such. 
Surely, we anticipate, the life on whose beginning 
such a cloud rested ought to brighten as it wears on. 
But no, the gloom deepens. And so far from any 
silver lining, to be turned out to view after a while, it 
is surcharged with tempestuous elements, which gather 
volume steadily till at last they burst forth in over- 
whelming fury on that devoted head. He seems not 
to have lived in any near and comforting sympathy 
with His own family. Notwithstanding the words 
which the angel spoke to Mary, and Joseph's dream, 
they were too human, too much like us, to follow their 
child with unwavering and loyal hearts, while He dis- 
appointed all their little plans concerning Him, and 
went about " His Father's business." Not only was it 
His lot to pursue a course which thus alienated His 
nearest kindred, but He must make himself an object 
of wrath to His neighbors among whom He had been 
brought up. He was so much disliked by them that 
they sought His life on the Sabbath day when He ven- 
tured to announce HimseK to them as the predicted 



THE SUFFERING SAVIOUR, 53 

Messiah ; and He went and dwelt in Capernaum, being 
without honor in His own country. And this turning 
against Him of His kindred and neighbors was not so 
painful as soon befell Him on a broader scale. The 
whole nation of the Jews, so far as it had any influence 
or authority, rejected Him, and counted Him an enemy. 
None but the outcast classes, and a few friends chosen 
from humble life, clung to Him amid the oppositions 
of the great. And even these were swerved from their 
allegiance by the drift of open hostility ; disciples not 
daring to reply to the false accusations of the Phari- 
sees, one denying Him, another betraying Him, all 
forsaking Him in the bitter hour when His hard lot 
drew to its climax in the garden and judgment hall, 
and beneath the weight of His own cross in the way 
to Calvary. 

We all know the story of His bruising, so that it 
need not be here recounted any further. And besides 
this more manifest suJBPering, which came on Him from 
without, was that inward pain of the spirit, bitterest 
of all, which consisted in His bearing our sins, and 
carrying our sorrows on His heart of infinite love. 
Christ so entered into our humanity as to be our 
Brother, — the perfect and sinless Brother of all the 
world. That brotherliness in Him must needs have 
caused that our guilt and woe should be to Him a 
source of infinite anguish. They are His brethren, 
and He is not ashamed to call them such, who have 
broken the laws of God, who are living and rioting in 
that sin which God abhors. It is in their behalf. His 
tender relationship to them bringing the awful load of 
their shame on His divine heart, that He answers to 
eternal justice, and meets the condemnation launched 
against them. This brotherliness, this oneness with 



54 SERMONS. 

all sinners, so that their shame became His shame, was 
more than everything outward which embittered His 
lot. This made His soul exceeding sorrowful even 
unto death ; this caused Him to sweat great drops of 
blood in the agony that bowed Him to the ground. 
Comprehending this relation of Christ to us as a 
brother, and knowing how vividly conscious He was of 
being one with us in all our sorrows and sins, we be- 
gin to see that no other bruising could be like that 
which it pleased God to inflict on Him. This being 
the brother of a rebellious race, and confessing him- 
self such while He is without sin, is what singles out 
Christ, from all that have ever lived on the earth, as 
peculiarly the burdened, and bruised, and rejected, and 
stricken One. As of His love, so of His suffering we 
may say that in the length and breadth and height 
thereof, it passeth knowledge. But this is not the 
whole of the fact we are called to contemplate. This 
bruising, such as none other ever endured, is traced to 
God's agency : " It pleased the Lord to bruise Him." 
Not that Christ suffered against His own will. He 
freely chose to bear the chastisement of our peace. 
He laid down His life of Himself. That Christ suffered 
freely in our behalf, because He wished to, is clear 
from the nature of the suffering. That suffering 
consisted peculiarly in His S3anpathy with us as our 
Brother ; and such sympathy is always one's own act, 
it cannot be put upon him by the act of another. Yet 
His choosing to be bruised does not exclude the agency 
of the Father. The sword awaketh against his fellow, 
and smiteth the good Shepherd who giveth His life 
for the sheep. Accordingly, all the wrath of Christ's 
foes, and their mocking and crucifying Him, are said 
to be in fulfillment of the Father's will. Peter, preach- 



THE SUFFERING SAVIOUR. 56 

ing to the multitude on the day of Pentecost, said, 
'' llim, being delivered by the determinate counsel 
and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by 
wicked hands have crucified and slain." And Christ 
Himself, in alluding to His sufferings, connects them 
always with the divine agency, — declaring that only 
thus could He*fulfill the prophecies concerning Him, 
or finish the work given Him by liis Father, or be the 
Saviour promised from the beginning. So, then, the 
fact which we are called to contemplate is that of 
Christ enduring this hard lot, and all this unuttera- 
ble anguish of heart, as laid on Him by the eternal 
purpose and prearrangement of the Lord, whom it 
pleased to bruise Him. 

This brings us to our second head, the wonderful- 
ness of the fact that Christ should thus suffer. In 
dwelling on the word " pleased," in the text, we should 
be careful, I think, not to press its meaning. That it 
really gave pleasure to God to inflict pain on Christ, 
is an idea which the Bible nowhere warrants. The 
word must be understood as we often understand it in 
our intercourse with one another. A man may say 
that it pleases him to do a thing, though the doing it 
is very painful to him. What he means is, that on the 
whole, or from a sense of duty, he chooses to do it. 
Thus it often pleases a general to order his troops into 
battle ; and yet tears of anguish will fill his eyes as 
he sees their line shriveling up in the enemy's fire. 
It pleases him only in the sense that he decides it to 
be his duty. We might say, without danger of being 
misunderstood, that it pleased the court to pass sen- 
tence of death on the prisoner. It was anything but 
a pleasure to them. They did it with a feeling of 
awe, and out of regard to the sacredness of justice ; 



66 SERMONS. 

nor is anything beyond this implied, though we say 
that " it pleased them." Only in some such way 
could it have pleased God to bruise the Messiah. He 
decided to do it; to let that Mediator, who stood 
ready for the exigency, go down into the condemna- 
tion which had passed on all men. Seeing what woe 
must happen by sparing Him, and what holiness and 
bliss would come by offering Him up. He chose to 
bruise Him. " It pleased Him ; " i. e., he saw it to be 
fit and proper, and therefore did it, against the yearn- 
ings of His Father's heart, "that He might be just 
and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus." 

But with this explanation the fact is still wonder- 
ful. We are astonished in view of Christ's sufferings, 
not only on account of their peculiar nature and their 
vastness, but that God should even choose to let Him 
endure them. There was in the Father no cruelty, no 
hard-heartedness ; yet how wonderful that He should 
allow such a fate to overtake the Son ! This wonder 
will grow upon us as we consider the following : 

1. The character of Christ. He was the Sinless 
One ; did no sin, and no guile was found in His mouth. 
Was He ever angry, filled with indignation ? Yes ; 
but it was only the flowing forth of infinite love 
against wickedness. Pilate coiild find no fault in Him. 
All his adversaries were ashamed. " Never man spake 
like this man," was the report of the officers sent to 
take Him. What outcast, what enemy was He not 
ready to befriend, and to help in all tenderest and 
most graceful ways ? Of whom did He ever complain ? 
What weak soul ever bruise, what strong man ever 
flatter to his hurt ? And for such an One this cup 
of woe was mixed ; nor might it pass from Him except 
He drink it. We can understand why the imperfect, 



THE SUFFERING SAVIOUR. 57 

the groveling, the sinful, should be afflicted. Such 
chastisement comports with their character, and may 
be to them a useful discipline. But why this Man ? 
Why should He, whose going about was only to do 
good, so that the whole world was made sweet by His 
one life, — why should He, above all others, be put to 
grief, till His soul was poured out unto death ? 

2. This bruising is wonderful, also, as we think on 
the character of God. He is a God of love, whom 
it pleased to so bruise this Holy One. Wonderful 
that His sword should awake against His fellow; 
against One who declared His name, whose meat and 
drink was to do His will ! This merciful God, so 
gracious to the disobedient even, forgiving iniquity 
and sin, making His sun to shine on the evil, send- 
ing His rain on the unjust, — such a God chooses 
to afflict, in the awful manner described. One who 
never disobeyed, who needed not to be forgiven, who 
was Himself kind to the unthankful, and did good 
hoping for nothing again. Is it true that God does 
not willingly afflict nor grieve the children of men ? 
Could He endure, with much long-suffering, the ves- 
sels of wrath fitted for destruction ? Was He so pa- 
tient with the cities of the plain, hearkening to the 
prayer of Abraham in their behaK ? Did He spare 
Nineveh, the cup of whose iniquity was full ? Had 
He no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but would 
rather that they should turn and live ? Protesting at 
the sin of Israel, and saying, '' How shall I give thee 
up, Ephraim ? " Sparing His people when they mur- 
mured against Him in the desert ; when they forgot 
Him, and turned to false gods, in Canaan. Remem- 
bering David in his affliction. All along from the be- 
ginning, in such various and affecting ways, repenting 



r 



8 SERMONS. 



tlie evil He thought to do, and doing it not. How 
our wonder grows, after tracing God's tender mercy 
as manifested toward the ill-deserving, if we then con- 
sider the agony He permitted to come upon the sinless 
and Just One ! What a shock to our feelings, what a 
revulsion, how strangely inconsistent, how out of keep- 
ing with all that we elsewhere see of the righteousness, 
and pity, and much-enduring mercy of our God ! "It 
pleased the Lord to bruise Him ; " to bruise the holy, 
though he forgave the unholy; to smite the Sinless, 
while he bore with the sinning ; to afflict the Right- 
eous One whom He loves, though sparing the wicked 
whom He abhors. 

3. And still our wonder grows as we consider again 
the relation of Christ and God to each other as Father 
and Son. Not only is it true, on the one hand, that 
Christ did no sin, and on the other hand that God is 
love, but the cord of affection which unites God to 
Christ is infinitely more tender than that which unites 
Him to the sinful creatures whom He spares. This 
truth is taught us all through the Bible. Though the 
Father so afflicts the Son, yet He seems to take espe- 
cial care that we may have no cause to doubt His 
supreme love for the Son. The angels are minister- 
ing spirits, and man is made lower than the angels ; 
but not so Christ. Of Him God says, " Thou art my 
Son." And when He bringeth Him forth. He saith, 
" Let all the angels of God worship Him." When He 
came up out of the water, the testimony of God to 
Him was, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am 
well pleased." And to the same effect Christ himself 
saith, " The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all 
things into His hands." And again, " No man know- 
eth the Father but the Son ; nor any man the Son 



THE SUFFERING SAVIOUR. 69 

save the Father." That it was a thing altogether 
wonderful in God thus to bruise His Only-begotten, 
the darling of his bosom, seems to be assumed by Paul, 
where He says, " If God spared not His own Son, but 
offered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him 
also freely give us all things ? " From beginning to 
end, therefore, we find only cause of amazement in 
the afflictions of Christ. The whole process of this 
bruising confounds us ; it is just the opposite of what 
we should expect ; our wonder is all the time increas- 
ing, as we follow it on step by step. It was a dread- 
ful load that Christ endured in becoming our brother 
so as to bear the sins of the world. We are aston- 
ished that any being, whatever his deserts, should thus 
bear our shame on his single heart. How amazing, 
then, that Christ, who deserved only the rewards of 
perfect holiness, should endure this load ! Nay, that 
He should endure it while the unholy were spared, for- 
given, lovingly entreated ! And all this, too, by the 
eternal purpose and foreknowledge of God, whom it 
pleased thus to bruise Him I The God who is love, 
and who loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity, — 
oh, how strange that He should not spare His own Son 
whom He loved, and who loved Him, and came to do 
His will, but should yield Him up, out of His Father's 
bosom, to be despised and rejected, to be numbered 
with transgressors, to make His grave with the wicked, 
after being obedient unto death, even the death of the 
cross ! 

And thus we come to the third head of our dis- 
course. We come confounded at this great m3'^stery 
of suffering ; and we ask eagerly, and with troubled 
hearts, how it can be explained that God was pleased 
thus to bruise His Son ? Why was He put to grief till 



60 SERMONS. 

there was no sorrow like His sorrow ? Why was He 
taken from judgment and brought down into the dust 
of death, leaving no one to declare His generation? 
Ah, my brother-men ! the answer is at hand. His 
soul was made an offering for sin. It was His great 
office, His singular and sublime work, to be the Lamb 
of God that taketh away the sins of the world. By 
Him lost men were to have access unto the Father, 
through a door which no man could shut, in which 
new and living way they might come boldly to a throne 
of grace. His taking this load upon Him and bear- 
ing it till He fulfilled the Father's Avill, earned for 
Him a name which is the only name under heaven 
given among men whereby we must be saved. 

We therefore explain one wonder by adducing an- 
other and greater wonder. That greater wonder is 
SIN, under which we all lie spiritually dead before 
God. Great is the mystery of godliness ; and the only 
key to it is the greater mystery of iniquity. Won- 
derful the story of our redemption ; but far more won- 
derful our apostasy, which calls for that redemption. 
In saying this, I do but give you the testimony of the 
Spirit himself. My brethren, it hath not yet entered 
into the heart even of the holiest man, to conceive 
how dreadful a thing sin is in the sight of God, as the 
Father sees it and as the Son sees it. Are the suffer- 
ings of Christ wonderful? But of sin God saith, in 
Jeremiah, " A wonderful and horrible thing is com- 
mitted in the land." No man has yet been found who 
could endure the sight of his own guilt when he saw 
it in the light in which it is seen by Christ and God. 
Adam could not. He fled at the bare hearing of the 
voice of the Lord among the trees of the garden. That 
angel at the gate of Eden, warning him away into the 



THE SUFFERING SA VIOUR. 61 

desert, was but the word of God laying open to him his 
guilty heart. What are we to understand by that mark 
set on the forehead of Cain, and the awful dread of ven- 
geance which pursued him wherever he went ? These 
were God's seal to the dreadful nature of sin. " Man 
hath sinned," was the bitter cry which wailed and 
sobbed through the universe ; and the direful nature 
of the calamity thus announced was but feebly figured 
forth in the garment of mourning that immediately 
covered every creature of God. Innocency had died ; 
and the holy Creator clothed His children in sackcloth 
as a faint emblem of that woful death. The sacred 
writers strive, by all the powers of language, to make 
us comprehend God's awful abhorrence of sin. That 
abhorrence is signified in the curse j^ronounced on the 
tempter and the sinning pair, iji the shooting-up of 
the briers and thorns to mar the fair face of the 
ground, in representing death and all the evils of our 
earthly lot as the fruit of sin, in cutting short the 
term of human life with the declaration that His spirit 
should not always strive with man, in the flood that 
rose over the sin-smitten world burying its highest 
mountains from His pure sight. The bondage in 
Egypt, the wanderings in the great and terrible wil- 
derness, the temple service, the costly sacrifices, the 
dreadful calamities, the wearisome ceremonial by 
which alone the high-priest even might approach the 
mercy-seat and Mve, — all these things are a language, 
and they all struggle together, as it were ten thousand 
tongues of preternatural eloquence, if by any means 
they may make us understand what is the length and 
breadth and height and depth, of the loathing and 
abhorrence which God hath against sin. Only a few 
men, the holiest, the best, such as God especially 



62 SERMONS. 

favored with His revelations, have been permitted to 
come into sympathy with Him in this respect, to see 
sin as He sees it, and to feel how horrible a thing it is. 
David was thus favored once, and the revelation was 
more than he could bear. He found no words fearful 
enough in which to utter his overwhelming sense of 
guilt. The greatest of the prophets, Isaiah, having 
for one moment seen the Lord of hosts, fell down in 
the temple, crying out, " Woe is me, for I am a man 
of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of un- 
clean lips." In that one awful moment, while the 
glory of God's presence was shining about him, sin 
appeared as the one hateful and horrible thing, the 
distilled essence of all other evils, whether actual or 
possible. And his dreadful experience was but a rep- 
etition of that of Job, the upright man of the land of 
the East, in whom God so delighted, — who, when he 
came before God, saw for the first time the unspeak- 
able hatefulness of sin ; and then even he, who had 
stood stoutly up in his integrity, was forced to cry, 
" I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." In 
like manner Peter, in the fishing-boat, receiving upon 
his conscience a momentary flash from God's judgment 
against sin, could not stand upright, but fell down, 
and cried, " Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 
O Lord." And again, when he fled from the Lord's 
reproving look, standing as it were at God's seat, and 
beholding his fault with the eye of infinite purity, 
" he went out and wept bitterly." So Paul, though 
he was alive once, that is, in a comfortable, easy state 
of mind, while he saw not his sin in the light of God's 
throne, tells us that when the commandment came, sin 
revived, and he died. Seeing his sin as God saw it, 
he exclaimed, " O wretched man that I am, who shall 



THE SUFFERING SAVIOUR. 63 

deliver me from the body of this death ! " And that 
picture in the Apocalypse, where the kings of the 
earth, and the great men, and the mighty men go into 
dens and caves, and call on the rocks and mountains 
to cover them, and hide them from Him that sitteth on 
the throne, — that appalling scene does but picture to 
us what our own feelings of self-abhorrence will be 
when we come to an adequate conception of the evil 
of sin. Nor are those wailings and gnashings of 
teeth, the sound of which is ever ascending out of the 
abodes of the lost, a whit too terrible to impress on 
our minds, not the stern and cruel vengeance of God, 
as some would try to believe, but the real nature of 
sin, whose awful consequences it is not in the power 
of language or imagery adequately to express. 

Here now we haA^e at length, towering up before 
us in dim but dreadful outline, the fact which the 
Father and Son beheld. The fact of sin rose before 
them like a great mountain ; and its shadow lay, like 
a funeral pall, over all the world. And it pleased the 
Father to bruise the Son, because by that bruising 
the mountain would be removed, and be cast into the 
sea. And here it is that we come at last to the expla- 
nation for which we have looked. The incarnation 
and death of Christ are no longer a mystery. They 
are explained by the greater and darker mystery of 
sin. In view of the dreadful enemy which had 
broken loose among men, the wonder would be rather 
at the Father's not bruising the Son, if by such bruis- 
ing that enemy may be stopped in his course, and for- 
ever destroyed. How shall a holy God not be pleased 
to see His Son suffer, and that consenting Son not 
gladly accept the suffering, if He may thus sweep this 
kingdom of darkness from the world, and bring down 



64 SERMO.YS. 

to men, out of heaven from God, the New Jerusalem, 
that the beauty thereof may fill the earth ? 

In what manner it is that Christ, by the mystery of 
His suffering, removes the greater mystery of sin, I 
have already intimated, but only intimated. Nor can 
I here set forth the wonderful process of our deliver- 
ance from sin, except to say that the secret of the 
great escape seems to me to lie in the truth of the 
brotherhood of Christ. Our redemption begins in the 
fact that Christ is not ashamed to call us His breth- 
ren. He came in the likeness of sinful flesh. He took 
our humanity upon Him ; and thus, as a brother in a 
brother's stead, He tasted death for every man. His 
sympathy was so perfect that He bore all our grief 
and shame on His one brotherly heart. And with 
that load of guilt upon Him, He met the condemna- 
tion which had gone forth against it, and in which He 
had consented with the Father. This was the atone- 
ment, the obtaining of forgiveness for us ; the recon- 
ciliation of the world to God, through Christ, in 
whom the Father was. And it is by our clinging to 
Him, as sinning brothers to their elder Brother who 
has obtained eternal redemption for them, that the 
power of an obedient life which is in Him becomes 
ours ; by our clinging to Him that we receive the gift 
of the Spirit which rests upon Him without measure, 
till we put down the motions of sin within us, and 
overcome everything which opposeth itself to us, 
standing complete in holiness, and being filled with 
all the fullness of God. 

And now, my brethren, seeing that the bruising of 
Christ is not at all wonderful, but just what we might 
expect of Him and the Father in their desire to de- 
stroy sin, what manner of persons ought we to be in 



THE SUFFERING SAVIOUR. 65 

all holy conversation and godliness ? Are we, by our 
daily sins, creating that greater wonder which ex- 
plains the lesser wonder of the sufferings of Christ ? 
Are we, by continuing in sin, making ourselves verily 
guilty of the body and blood of Christ ? Is it hard 
for us to comprehend the mystery of the cross of 
Chi'ist? Who then shall be able to give a reason for 
the sin we willfully commit, which sin lifted up the 
cross, and drove the nails, and thrust the spear ? Oh, 
how wonderful, and to all holy beings how shocking, 
if, while claiming to be members of that suffering 
Saviour's body, we are not gladly filling up what is 
behind of His sufferings ; not only keeping our own 
souls unspotted from the world, but daily presenting 
ourselves a living sacrifice, if by any means we may 
do something to rid the universe of that mystery of 
mysteries which weighed down the Son of God with 
agony in the Garden, and bowed His royal head on 
Calvary, till the heavens were dark with grief, and 
bursting rocks testified that no sorrow could be like 
His sorrow ! 



A LAW OF PROGRESS. 

And He gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set 
his foot on. — Acts vii. 5. 

I WISH to speak, in this sermon, of a curious fact 
wMcli pertains to nearly all human progress ; the fact, 
namely, that in such progress there is a double move- 
ment, — first, a sudden purpose centring itself some- 
where in the future, and then a slow process of actual 
advance up to that centre. It is not absurd or para- 
doxical, but strictly accurate, to say that a man makes 
progress by first getting ahead of himself, and then 
catching up with himself. Nor is this fact, or law 
governing human progress, a thing of recent dis- 
covery ; for it was an early English poet who wrote 
the striking and oft-quoted lines, — 

"Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man ! " 

This power to go ahead of himself in purpose, and 
then to overtake himself in actual achievement, is what 
makes man a progressive being ; it is a power which 
distinguishes him from the lower orders of creatures. 
The two parts of this double movement are alike 
necessary : without the purpose the actual advance is 
never made ; and the purpose will not lift one, or 
draw him forward, save as his steady action moves on 
to overtake it. 

Let me first give some illustrations of the fact or 
law now noticed, and then show how it pertains to our 
religious duties. 



A LAW OF PROGRESS. 67 

1. The case of Abraham, referred to in our text, is 
ui point. Abraham, says Stephen in his address to 
the Sanhedrin, came out of the land of the Chal- 
daeans and dwelt in Charran ; and from thence, when 
his father was dead, God removed him into this land, 
wherein ye now dwell. "And He gave him none 
inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on ; 
yet He promised that He would give it to him for a 
possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he 
had no child." K we turn back to the history of 
Abraham, in the Book of Genesis, we shall find this 
statement fully borne out. He obtained but the title 
to his inheritance when he first went into Canaan. 
He then conceived a hope and a purpose, wliich 
planted his foot far forward in the future, but slow 
ages were to wear away, and many reverses come on 
him and his descendants, before that hope and pur- 
pose were fulfilled. Abraham came, an utter stran- 
ger, while the Canaanite yet dwelt in the land ; and 
his movements show that he fully believed God's 
promise concerning him. He passed through the land 
to Sichem, near the place where our Lord met the 
woman at the well more than two thousand years 
afterwards. There he builded an altar unto the Lord. 
Now the ancient Hebrews were not wont to build 
altars on foreign soil. Where their altars were, there 
were their homes, and wives, and little ones, and there 
all their earthly possessions centred. It therefore 
meant a great deal to Abraham when he built an 
altar near Sichem. It meant that he looked on the 
land as his, though the Canaanites still held it, though 
not enough of it to set foot on was yet actually his 
own. This actual state of things Abraham recognized 
at all times. He did not interfere with the rights of 



68 SERMONS. 

property. Years afterwards, when Sarah died and 
he sought a burial-place for her, he applied to Ephron, 
who owned the spot of ground which he desired, 
and for it weighed him four hundred shekels of sil- 
ver, current money with the merchant. Yet there 
stood his altars ; for already, since erecting the one at 
Sichem, he had built at least two others, — one at 
Bethel, and one in the plain of Mamre, which is in 
Hebron. Thus did he think of the whole land as his, 
while as yet it was not his. He was a stranger and 
sojourner in it. In time of famine he left it, and went 
to live in Egypt. He built no city, but dwelt in tents. 
His altars, and the cave of Machpelah, were the proofs 
of his strong faith. They anchored him to a distant 
future. And so sure was he that God who had prom- 
ised him the possession would fulfill His promise, that 
he took no unfair means to obtain the prize. He pa- 
tiently waited, and obeyed God, not doubting that his 
great hope would be overtaken. He made over the 
richest portion of the land to his kinsman Lot, rather 
than be at strife with him. And when the life of 
Isaac, in whom his hopes centred, was threatened, he 
did not seek to turn aside the fatal stroke. Abraham 
never made haste, or grew impatient, or murmured 
concerning the promise. He obeyed God, whom he 
believed ; he was just to all men, not seizing the in- 
heritance, but calmly waiting till God should give 
it to him. His faith that the whole of Canaan should 
be his, and that it should be full of his descendants, 
was like a strong hand coming out of the distant fu- 
ture, taking hold of him, and drawing and guiding 
him forward. He did not waver, and he did not 
doubt. Though he died without the sight, yet he died 
believing. The first step toward his own progress, 



A LAW OF PROGRESS. 69 

and that of his nation, having been taken, he did not 
fall back from it. The cord of faith which held him, 
and his children after him, did not break, but drew 
them steadily on until they overtook their hope and 
purpose under Joshua. 

2. Another instance of this double movement — 
first an expectation and purpose, and then a slow ad- 
vance till it is overtaken — may be seen in the history 
of the Israelites after they had become a nation. They 
went do\vn into Egypt in the days of Joseph, and 
there were reduced to slavery. Centuries of bondage 
blinded them to their great future, though they still 
held together. At length Moses came, called to his 
task in a miraculous manner, to remind Israel of that 
great hope not yet overtaken. At first they would not 
beheve him, but God gradually gave him their con- 
fidence ; and now we see that whole people, as with 
one heart, fired by a sudden purpose. They will 
achieve liberty, they will repossess their long-lost in- 
heritance. If there had been visible cords stretching 
from Canaan, and laying hold of them all, they could 
not have been drawn more surely than they were 
toward that land. But how slow their progress, and 
how often they looked backward after crossing the 
Red Sea ! They had the weaknesses which we might 
expect from their life in Egypt, and only the strong 
faith of Moses held them to their purpose. But when 
they had crossed the Jordan, and built their altars in 
the plain toward Jericho, the land was not theirs by 
possession. The deed had still to overtake the pur- 
pose. They had set up their standard far in advance, 
and now they must march forward to it. Joshua 
died, the Judges all died. There were many victories 
and many defeats. The Lord chastised them sorely 



70 SERMONS. 

for their sins. Samuel and Saul arose and passed 
away ; and David sat on the throne at Jerusalem, 
before the achievement had caught up with the expec- 
tation. And even then the ideal conquest of Canaan 
had not taken place ; for the Canaanite still dwelt in 
the land, nor did his idolatries wholly cease out of it. 
The Israelites began to learn, as the hope of the Mes- 
siah more clearly dawned on them, that their true great- 
ness was not to be temporal but spiritual. This hope 
now took full possession of them. It drew them on- 
ward, especially in their prophets and other holy men, 
toward a purer and stronger grasp of their destiny 
under God. But some of them changed the nature 
of that coming glory in their thoughts, so that they 
did not know it when it appeared ; and hence they 
fell back from it, and were weakened and destroyed. 
Others, seeing more clearly what Christ was to be to 
them and the world, recognized Him when He came, 
and were lifted by Him to a new plane of hopes and 
expectations, at sight of which all the past grew dim 
in their eyes. 

3. The American nation was at first only a pur- 
pose ; nor has that purpose even yet been overtaken, 
— we may doubt if it ever will be. " All men are 
created free and equal," was the mark which its 
founders set up. But they knew that that mark was 
far before them. They utterly failed to reach it 
when they came to organize the government ; and so 
far short of it did their successors threescore years 
after them come, that it was ridiculed as impracticable 
and visionary. It was an ideal; and it may never 
become real in any actual sense. But it is the goal 
and guiding star of the nation, standing far ofP in the 
future, laying its line of light across all that was to 



A LAW OF PROGRESS. 71 

be or is to be of convulsion and bloodshed, and hold- 
ing up the hearts of those who woidd make the last 
result answer to the first promise. How little time it 
took to set up that far-off standard which has so fired 
the imaginations of patriots ! How slow and toil- 
some, amid fierce struggles and many slips backward, 
the advance toward it! Yet without the purpose 
there would not be the effort at achievement. A 
nation may fail to reach its ideal, but a nation without 
an ideal can achieve no progress. 

4. If we descend to individuals, we see them mak- 
ing progress, in whatever they undertake, by this 
double movement. As a nurse beo'uiles an unwillinof 
child into walldng, by throwing ahead of it some 
bright thing which it is tempted to chase after, so we 
are all the time proposing to ourselves objects which 
stir up our energies to pursue them. We even 
wallc or run only by thrusting our foot forward, and 
with that as a centre of motion drawing on our whole 
body. We do not go all at once, nor by a single 
movement ; there is first the taking hold of something 
in advance, and then the coming up to it. The 
scholar is not in all respects a scholar when he first 
assumes that name. He thereby only declares his 
purpose. To overtake that purpose will require long 
years of study and investigation ; indeed, he can never 
fully overtake it. It will move on in advance of him 
as he toils after it, even as Alps on Alps arise ; and 
the utmost that he can ever know will only reveal to 
him the boundless realms which are yet unexplored. 
The same is true of the mechanic, the artist, the mer- 
chant, the professional man. The carpenter looks at 
work which he did when he first took the name, and 
sees in it many defects. He aimed to do better work, 



72 SERMONS. 

and has overtaken his aim. The artist, looking on his 
first rude drawings and sketches, feels that he was not 
an artist then in the high sense in which he after- 
wards became one. He had a standard far ahead of 
him, from which came back an influence that has laid 
hold of him and drawn him forward. The physician, 
however carefully educated for his work, is yet a 
novice when he enters upon it. How much more he 
learns after the name is his than he learned before ! 
His knowledge of the human frame, and of its dis- 
eases and their treatment, is all the time increasing 
as the circle of his experience widens. Oh, what a 
comment it is on the incompleteness of our present 
lives, and the need of another life to explain why God 
should create us at all, that just as soon as we begin to 
learn how to do our work the infirmities of age com- 
pel us to lay it aside I If the lawyer could retain all 
his first enthusiasm, and have it at his command when 
long years of study and practice have made him a 
master of the law, what an advocate he would be ! 
If the fire of the young preacher would not go out 
after a little, but burn on into his mature life and old 
age, when he thoroughly knows the Scriptures, and is 
wise in all that pertains to his calling, what a minister 
he would be ! But the eye grows dim. The loosened 
fibres of the flesh do not respond to the quick im- 
pulses of the soul. The preacher, balked by his in- 
firmities, finds himseK least in his vocation when he is 
greatest, as he once was greatest when he was least. 
There is no goal within the limits of our bodily powers 
which is adequate to human development. These fail 
us just as we have learned how to use them to the best 
advantage. Our ideal must lie outside of them all ; 
and our purpose must go across them, laying hold of 



A LAW OF PROGRESS. 73 

that ideal, and still lifting us aloft when heart and 
flesh fail. The objects which we set before ourselves 
in this life, and which develop us while we toil toward 
them, illustrate a universal law of moral and religious 
progress ; but that progress itself is on another plane, 
and has other and loftier ideals. 

Thus far we have been chiefly tracing an analogy ; 
let us now see what lessons it reads to us who have 
duties to perform toward Christ and His kingdom. 

1. The first lesson is that our Christian sanctifica- 
tion goes forward by working toward a definite point, 
which point represents to us a perfect ideal yet to be 
attained. If you would know what that point is, it is 
the glorified person and the sinless character of Christ 
our Lord. In his letter to the Philippians St. Paul 
says : " Not as though I had already attained, either 
were already perfect ; but I follow after, if that I may 
apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of 
Christ Jesus." To apprehend a thing is to seize it, to 
lay hold of it. The apostle confesses that he has not 
yet laid hold of his ideal of a perfect Christian man- 
hood. But from Christ, in whom he sees that ideal, 
an influence has come down and laid hold of him, and 
is steadily drawing him upward. His glorified Lord 
became this ideal to him, this standard of attainment 
for him to struggle toward, when he obeyed the heav- 
enly vision. In the way to Damascus, quick as the 
flash of light which smote him to the ground, his pur- 
pose was formed. He could not then fully know 
what it meant, for he was in darkness and confusion 
of mind. But he had strength to venture all, even 
himself, for the glory which had been suddenly re- 
vealed to him. As he went on, as he prayed and med- 
itated and labored, his view of that toward which he 



74 SERMONS. 

was struggling became clearer, and he was glad to find 
in himself tlie evidence that he steadily drew nearer 
to it. Of himself and those who toiled with him he 
could at all times say, " Now is our salvation nearer 
than when we believed." It is this great purpose, not 
yet overtaken, which he seems to have in mind when 
he says that his conversation is in heaven. He goes 
forward by faith into a life of goodness which is yet 
to be made actual to him. The ideal of Paul is far 
in the future, and the real Paul is pressing forward to 
overtake the ideal. Every earnest Christian is like a 
runner at the Grecian games. The mark set before 
him is a complete Christian character. If his soul be 
not full of yearning for that, he will cease to run, or 
will run amiss. But if he already lays hold of it in 
faith, he will press toward it, forgetting the things 
behind and reaching forth unto those before. His 
high purpose, and his struggle to reach it, maintained 
within him by the spirit of God, will carry him from 
strength to strength. Those three thousand, converted 
in one day at the time of Pentecost, no doubt had 
very dim visions of what it is to be a perfect Chris- 
tian. But they saw something in the future which 
drew all that was good in them toward it ; and as they 
yielded to the attraction what they saw grew brighter, 
while it made their own souls better and better. 

2. This law of progress which we have considered, 
also reads an important lesson to those who are hes- 
itating to accept Christ. They have come near to the 
kingdom of God ; but they refuse to enter into it, for 
they lack certain deep convictions, or strong impulses, 
or clear views, which they feel that they should have. 
Are there any such here present? Dear friends, you 
will never get any farther than you have now come 



A LAW OF PROGRESS. 75 

till you take hold of something beyond yourseK. That 
for which you wait will not be yours till you have 
made Christ your Lord and Master. Plant yourself 
outside of your doubts and fears by a swift and hearty 
surrender to Him, and gradually you will escape from 
the surrounding' gloom. That which you wait for must 
be the effect of your own action. Do not say any 
longer that you must see the effect, before you can 
make up your mind to supply the cause. Give that 
sudden and brave spring forward which is the answer 
to Christ's own blessed invitation, " Come unto me ; " 
and from this act of surrender, as from some blessed 
source far bej'^ond and above you, there shall come to 
you a power which will lift you away from your fears, 
and from all your mental confusion, into the light and 
the peace of God's own presence. You may not find 
your proper orbit all at once, but you will no longer 
be a wandering star. The Lord your Righteousness, 
that glorious centre as yet but dimly discerned, will 
draw you out of the darkness in which you were so far 
off. Christ will lead you to the rock, higher than 
yourself, on which your opening eye is fixed. He wall 
draw you as the magnet draws the steel, binding you 
to Himself with indissoluble cords. 

3. But perhaps you have in your heart owned Christ 
as your Lord, and are trying to rest in that, not join- 
ing yourself to the company of His disciples. Do not 
say, then, that membership in a church of Christ is 
nothing. It is a great thing. It plants your foot 
forward. It is another step added to those you 
have already taken, without which you must cease to 
make progress. It brings new obligations, new influ- 
ences and motives, which you need to lift you farther 
into the light. Oh, how many have stopped in their 



76 SERMONS. 

religious life just here ! They shrank from confessing 
Christ openly, and were left without any goal of attain- 
ment in the future. There was no mark for them to 
press toward, and gradually they ceased to run or 
wandered away. Suppose that Abraham, when he 
heard what God was to do for him, had stayed in 
Chaldsea. He could not have become the man he 
afterwards was, if he had not separated himself to 
God's work. It was his mighty purpose, earnestly 
followed in the strength which God gave, that made 
him great. He never could have been the father of 
the faithful, and the friend of God, if he had not 
gone into Canaan, built his altars there, and there 
pitched his tent in the midst of his flocks. And you 
will remain where you are in your religious life, or 
the rather slide back from it, a prey to doubts, if you 
have no mark ahead of yourself, toward which to 
press. The open confession of Christ, and union with 
His people, furnishes such a mark. It is the next 
summit before you on your way to heaven, if you have 
come through the wicket-gate by choosing Christ to 
be your Lord and Master. What if Israel had stayed 
in Egypt after hearing that they were to possess Ca- 
naan ? Then they would have simply continued to be 
bondmen, despite of the promise. But they openly 
professed their faith. The wrath of the king could 
not withhold them ; and they braved the sea, and the 
wilderness, with their eye fixed on the prize. This 
openness, this venturing in God's strength, this press- 
ing after the unattained, made them a powerful and 
victorious people. Perhaps you say that you are not 
fitted for church-membership. But that is just the 
argument of this sermon. The lawyer is not fitted to 
be a lawyer when he first becomes one ; and the same 



A LAW OF PROGRESS. 11 

is true of other callings, in which experience alone 
can make one wholly fit for it. You need the mem- 
bership as a mark or goal. To be sure, it is ahead of 
you ; it may be far ahead. But it is the measure of 
your purpose. It tells what, with God's help, you are 
determined to become. You cannot apprehend the 
prize if you do not allow yourself to be apprehended 
for it. You admire the character of St. Paul, dear 
friend. You wonder at his heroic life. But he had 
this same question to meet, over which you may stum- 
ble. What if he, after becoming a disciple, had gone 
away into Arabia never to come back ? to stay there, 
and be like those about him, never confessing Christ 
or proclaiming the new faith which was in him ? Had 
he taken that course, a large part of our present New 
Testament would not have been written. But we 
know that he took another course. He essaj^ed to 
join himself unto the disciples. And though they 
were afraid of him at first, and would not receive him, 
he persisted in urging his case till he became one of 
their number. You may stop where you now are, 
apart from the army which Christ leads ; and neither 
you nor your friends may ever know what energies in 
you are thus left to lie dormant. But take the step, 
enter that army, press after its bright standard which 
is ever moving away upward before you, and you shall 
find, and the world about you shall confess, that the 
spiritual forces in you, which were once no greater 
than a grain of mustard-seed, have unfolded and 
grown till they are like a mighty tree in which the 
birds of the air have their habitation. 



THE WITNESS OF UNBELIEF. 

In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them 
which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who 
is the image of God, should shine unto them. — 2 CoR. iv. 4. 

The late John Stuart Mill, famous the world over 
for his philosophy, did not recognize, anywhere in all 
his writings, the existence of a soul in man separate 
from the body. Yet it is said that while he lay dying 
he asked a daughter, who stood by his bedside, what 
message he should take from her to her mother, his 
beloved wife, who had died some years before him. 
Lord Herbert of Cherbury, also a distinguished leader 
of the English deists two hundred years ago, published 
a work, the object of which was to prove the impos- 
sibility of any special revelation from God to men. 
Yet he declares that before putting that work into the 
hands of the printer he sought divine guidance, and 
that a clear voice, speaking to him out of the sky, 
directed him to go forward with his enterprise. The 
example of these two men, thus witnessing to the 
truth which they sought to destroy, may serve to sug- 
gest the general subject which I propose now to con- 
sider ; namely, the testimony which unbelievers them- 
selves furnish in favor of the great truths of a divine 
revelation. 

The sum and substance of the gospel, as contained 
in the Old and New Testaments, we hold to be this : 
that mankind have fallen away from their original 



THE WITNESS OF UNBELIEF. 79 

fellowship with the true God, and need to be restored 
to that lost communion through the mediation and 
atonement of Jesus Christ. To this tremendous state- 
ment, so emphatically made in the text, I hold that 
the infidel world is to-day a powerful though unwill- 
ing witness. 

Unbelief is not a thing by itself, but simply one of 
the forms in which the general worldliness or ungodli- 
ness of men is manifested. All the moral attributes 
of God, such as His truth, His justice. His mercy, and 
His faithfulness, are but the various forthputtings of 
that infinite love which constitutes His essential char- 
acter ; and so all the evil developments of human life, 
such as ambition, the greed of gain, crime, vice, pride, 
and infidelity, are but varying manifestations of that 
sinful worldliness which is the universal curse. Our 
noblest instincts confirm all that the Scriptures teach 
respecting the high origin and powers of the human 
soul. When we read that " there is a spirit in man, 
and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them 
understanding," the deepest voice of our nature says 
Amen to the glorious words. It is written on the 
tables of our hearts, as truly as in the first chapter of 
Genesis, that we were made in the image of God. 
The eighth Psahn reechoes our inmost convictions in 
declaring that God crowned man with glory and honor, 
and set him over the work of His hands. When St. 
Paul tells us that God is the Father of the spirits of 
flesh, a sacred joy at the centre of our being starts up 
responsively to his words. It is a truth of natural 
religion, no less than of revealed religion, which St. 
Luke proclaims in his genealogy of Christ, where he 
says that as Seth was the son of Adam, so was Adam 
the son of God. 



80 SERMONS. 

Now such being the original greatness of men, as 
they came immortal spirits from the hand of their 
Creator, it follows that their present state of worldli- 
ness and unbelief could be reached only by some great 
catastrophe. There has been a terrible falling away 
of the spiritual nature in mankind. That glorious 
spirit was, for wise reasons, joined to the flesh, and 
subjected to a probation in this present world. In 
this union of the immortal with the mortal, however, 
the immortal spirit was placed on the throne, and the 
mortal body was to be its servant, for all the high 
ends given it to accomplish here. That dominion and 
supremacy the soul has not maintained. It has abdi- 
cated its lofty throne. The tendencies of the lower 
nature have risen up around the higher nature, and 
laid hold of it, and drawn it down into a woful bond- 
age. It lies prostrate and dying in that ignoble 
slavery, as we sometimes find the decayed ruins of a 
noble tree underneath the rank luxuriance of a poi- 
sonous vine, which grew up around its lordly stem, 
and laid hold of its branches one after another, draw- 
ing them gradually downward into the dust of death. 
This state, into which mankind have come by yielding 
to their lower nature, is pictured to us in the expul- 
sion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. The dreadful 
spiritual change which came upon man was as if the 
earth, once arrayed in beauty and fruitfulness, should 
begin to be covered with briers and thorns. How a 
compassionate God felt, in view of this great down- 
fall and thralldom of His children, is taught us by the 
incarnation, suiferings, and intercession of our Lord. 
We see the awful issue and rebound of this spiritual 
overthrow of our race in the lurid flames of that bot- 
tomless pit whose smoke ascendeth up forever. Now 



THE WITNESS OF UNBELIEF. 81 

it is not the intellectual nature in men, nor their 
aesthetic nature, nor their affections as related to the 
intercourse of this life, which the Scriptures have 
especially in view, when they speak in such awful 
terms as they do of the guilt and misery of men. 
The great calamity which they bewail is the separa- 
tion of the spirits of all flesh from their divine Father, 
and the bondage of those spirits to the things of time 
and sense. True, the highest capacity in man cannot 
be injured and his other powers go unharmed. The 
rust which gathers on the top of a bed of marble 
sends its stain downward through all the underlying 
whiteness. The flame on the roof of a goodly build- 
ing, which draws to itself the quenching streams of 
water, not only burns where it is, but causes all the 
beauty beneath it to be soiled by its own effects. So 
when man is maimed and soiled in his spirit by de- 
parting from God into the bondage of the flesh, all 
the lower powers of his nature suffer. He is not so 
good a scientist, speculatist, merchant, reformer, neigh- 
bor, parent, citizen, friend, as he would have been had 
he not thus fallen. Yet his various powers remain to 
him ; and he uses them, such as they are, in the various 
activities of the present life, though laboring without 
reference to God, and wholly deprived of that cer- 
tainty of being led into the truth which the presence 
and inworking of God assure. 

It is this want of divine communion, this departure 
from God and forgetfulness of Him, which the Bible 
has in view when it speaks of the sinfulness of men. 
They have all gone out of the way ; they are wander- 
ing sheep, lost pieces of silver, prodigal children. 
The absence of God from the heart, who alone can 
enlighten and keep it, leaves it deceitful above all 



82 SERMONS. 

things, and desperately wicked. This is that enmity 
of the carnal heart against God of which we read. 
This was the body of death under which Saint Paul 
groaned and cried out for deliverance. Through this 
bondage to the flesh it is that the world lieth in wicked- 
ness. This makes men dead toward God; dead in 
trespasses and sins ; without power to live that holy 
and divine life for which they were created, save as 
they are delivered from their bondage back into the 
glorious liberty of the sons of God. 

Now this universal sinfulness, ungodliness, worldli- 
ness, or whatever we please to call it, is shown around 
us in ahnost endless forms. The infidelities of the 
day cannot escape our classification ; they, too, are 
forms of the general worldliness; and they bear wit- 
ness, as clearly as all other forms of wickedness, that 
the teachings of God's word and the deeper instincts 
of our hearts are true. I call them to the stand, and 
force them to give in their testimony, just as con- 
fidently as I call up the commonest sins of the street. 
Look on that murderer in yonder prison, whom the 
public conscience, if not the legal judge, has con- 
demned to die. Why did he take the life of his fel- 
low ? and why has he no feeling of the enormity of 
his crime ? Ah ! it is a long, sad story of traveling 
down into the darkness of sensuality and crime. The 
high spiritual nature in him became weak, powerless, 
enslaved. No light of God's love shone through his 
soul. Selfishness, hatred, jealousy, revenge, the des- 
peration of appetite and passion, drove him to his 
bloody work. Oh that he had been as in days past — 
as in the sweet and innocent years of childhood, when 
heaven lay all about him ! Oh that he had clung to 
the hand of God, and cherished the high powers of 



THE WITNESS OF UNBELIEF. 83 

his soul, and not let himself be chained in the fetters 
of the flesh ! Then had he escaped the temptation to 
evil, and not been devoted to death, but to life eternal. 
Murder is but the form of our common sinfulness, 
into which he, by yielding to certain evil tendencies, 
was at last betrayed. Or take the defaulter, suddenly 
overwhelmed by exposure, and dragging family and 
friends down with him into the gulf of public infamy. 
Why did he recklessly squander the large sums en- 
trusted to him, regardless of the claims of those who 
suffer by his dishonesty ? The explanation is at hand. 
His intellect, his aspirations, all the energies of his 
nature, were turned into the downward path. They 
became the instruments of a selfish will. The things 
unseen and eternal faded from his sight, and all the 
objects he most sought lay in the sphere of the seen 
and temporal. His conscience, love of justice, and 
sense of obligation grew weak, through the weakness 
of that higher nature in him which he had neglected. 
Though he gave heed to the outward forms of religion, 
his soul was all the time sinking into a deeper slum- 
ber. The eye of faith was dim. Eternity faded from 
his vision, and time was to him the all in all. God 
was not near him. He had not spiritual power enough 
to hold in check his strong earthly desires. If he had 
held fast to God, thus keeping his higher nature strong 
and active, he would have resisted the temptation. 
But he fell away from God ; and through the feeble- 
ness of his spiritual life, which thus came upon him, 
he was led captive by his overgrown fleshly tendencies. 
His conduct is a proof of the truth of what the Scrip- 
tures say on the subject of human apostasy. He 
would not have behaved in a manner so unworthy of 
his immortal nature, had not that nature been first 
brought into bondage by his departure from God. 



84 SERMONS. 

Thus might I go on, showing not only that all 
specific crimes, but that the corruption, extravagance, 
and recklessness of large bodies of men are neither 
more nor less than forms of that worldliness or un- 
godliness which constitutes the general life of our 
race. What the specific forms of this worldly life 
are — in what crimes, vices, indulgences, unbeliefs, 
or oppositions it will show itself — depends, of course, 
on the peculiarities of individuals. One will show 
his lack of spiritual life, and his bondage to this 
world, in one way, and another in another way ; each 
according to the original bent of his mind, his culture, 
his surroundings, his present pursuits. That deadness 
of soul which makes this one a murderer, and that 
one a defaulter, makes another one a doubter and a 
scorner of the sublime teachings of religion. Those 
teachings pertain to a sphere out of which he has 
fallen. He has no eye for the glories of heaven, no 
ear for its everlasting song. Being wholly shut up 
and absorbed in the realms of sense, what wonder is 
it that he has become a skeptic and atheist ? that he 
refuses to believe in things to which his soul is dead ? 

Now I am well aware that the unbelieving scholars 
and scientists of our day will dislike my principle of 
classification. They will spurn me for putting their 
infidelities into the same category with more outbreak- 
ing forms of human wickedness. Yet this is precisely 
where I put them and all their theories. Worldliness 
is their sin. They have ceased to walk with God. 
The spiritual side of their nature is blind, insensate, 
dead. God and heaven have, by their own confession, 
become to them the unknown and the " unknowable." 
Who shall compute the magnitude of their loss ? How 
contemptible their paltry discoveries, in the sphere of 



THE WITNESS OF UNBELIEF. 85 

the finite, compared with the infinite realm of which 
they have lost their clear knowledge ! It saddens me, 
and I heave a sigh of sincere pity for the poor outcast 
from his divine Father's arms, when I hear Mr. Her- 
bert Spencer say that God is the unknowable. Oh, 
what an exile is that ! what a banishment from the 
true home of the Sj^irit, from that great inheritance in 
which alone the soul of man can gTow, and ripen, and 
be full of peace and joy ! He knows nothing of all 
that, and denies that it ever can be known. Our 
exulting faith in things divine and eternal is to him a 
mystery. He thinks us deluded, insane. Ah, my 
friends ! just so the blind man wonders when he hears 
us speak of the glories of autumnal forests, of the 
exquisite beauties of the lily and violet, of the firma- 
ment blossoming every night with starry worlds. He, 
and Mr. Huxley, and Mr. Darwin, and Mr. Mill, and 
Alexander Bain, busy themselves with trying to shut 
all knowledge up to the phenomena of matter. Man 
is to them but a developed brute. Mind is the effect 
of bodily organization. Thought is a function of the 
gray matter in the brain. All that you find in Shake- 
speare, Milton, Isaiah, or Paul exists, in a crude and 
rudimentary state, in the reptile which we bruise with 
our heel. Now what lights of faith must have gone 
out in the souls of such men, if they do indeed, with 
all sincerit}'", believe what they say ! How they nar- 
row down and belittle this mighty universe ! They 
have closed up in themselves those windows by which 
the human soul may look forth on the bright plains of 
immensity ; and hence they say that there are no such 
plains. But the fact that they see not the uncondi- 
tioned world proves to us quite another truth. If we 
had not our own experience, which we dare not doubt, 



86 SERMONS. 

yet there is the testimony of the most imperial minds 
of our race, in every generation, to the reality of a 
spiritual world. We can doubt the teachings of our 
bodily senses sooner than the sacred convictions of our 
souls. It would be less hard for us to believe that 
there is no earth, no sea, no sky or stars, than to be- 
lieve that there is no God. He is the self-evident and 
omnipresent One ; and therefore we say that any man 
who doubts the existence of God confesses to his own 
spiritual blindness. He has fallen away into the 
power of this world. The higher faculties of his 
nature have grown torpid and dead during his long 
exile from God. Having ears he hears not, and the 
eyes of his soul are closed up against those great 
truths which wander to us out of the eternal realm. 
He is like the bewildered Prince of Denmark, whom 
Shakespeare makes say, " This most excellent canopy, 
the air, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majes- 
tical roof fretted with golden fire, appears no other 
thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of 
vapors." " Appears no other thing to me " is the 
wise language of the great dramatist; for he well 
knew that the mind of Hamlet was in no condi- 
tion to pass judgment on this matter, and that his 
gloomy and inadequate views of the universe but 
proved the fearfully distracted state of his own 
mind. It is not necessary, therefore, that we should 
charge hypocrisy or insincerity on the unbelievers of 
our time, as they so freely do upon us. We approach 
them with the Scriptural doctrine of the self-exile 
of man from God. Their unbelief witnesses, with a 
marvelous emphasis, that that doctrine is true. We 
look upon some of the foremost of these doubters 
with a sorrowful respect ; with respect in view of their 



THE WITNESS OF UNBELIEF. 87 

great natural abilities and consummate earthly culture, 
with sorrow when we see how completely they have 
wandered out of the higher realms of the soul. They 
may be authorities on many questions of mere natural 
science, in all matters pertaining to this worldly life. 
But when it comes to spiritual concerns, they are no 
more fitted to teach than the humblest of the rude 
and unlettered mass. Nay, there are thousands, un- 
known to scientific or literary fame, whose word upon 
these high themes is to be taken long before theirs ; 
for what is hid from the wise and prudent is revealed 
to babes. The sublime doctrine of the new birth 
found no entrance into the cultivated soul of Nicode- 
mus, all whose culture was of an earthly kind ; but it 
was welcomed by the woman of Samaria, for she was 
yet alive in that part of her nature which looks toward 
God, and eternity, and spiritual things. " The natural 
man perceiveth not the things which be of God," says 
St. Paul. No matter how learned or wise any may 
be, this disability rests upon them till they have the 
faculty of divine knowledge restored to them in Christ. 
He alone is the truth ; and all who follow in His steps, 
however lowly, partake of the spirit of truth in Him ; 
while any who turn aside from the life which He has 
brought down to us walk in darkness. They have in 
them no knowledge or faculty on which to build an 
opinion concerning the realm of spiritual truth. All 
their learning and science carries them farther into 
that worldliness where God is never found. We grieve 
over the torpid and crippled state of their religious 
nature, while admiring the wonderful strides which 
they make in all other knowledge ; and the pressing 
question with us is. How shall they, or at least their 
deluded followers, so many of them as we may reach, 



88 SERMONS. 

be rescued from tliat bondage of the flesh to which 
their unbelief witnesses, and be turned about, and 
made to see those eternal verities which are an un- 
known land to them in their present state of mind ? 

To this question, brethren, let us now attend. We 
see that the great need of unbelievers, as of all other 
worldly men, is to be raised up out of the power of 
the flesh into communion with God. Of course this 
restoration is a supernatural work. There are no 
forces in nature which can raise man above nature ; 
that which elevates us to God must come from God. 
Now we hold to all the divine and supernatural helps 
for which this mighty exigency calls ; they have been 
let down to us in the cross of Jesus Christ, by whom 
also we receive atonement, and who brings life and 
immortality to light. This great redemption in Him 
is all our hope and aU our joy. But while we rejoice 
in all the mysteries which this redemption involves, 
being led by the Spirit of God, how are worldly men 
and unbelievers to be convinced of their truth, that 
they, too, may become partakers of our joy? 

1. Let me say a word, first, of those arguments 
which we address to the reason and understanding of 
men. Far be it from me to underrate any of these. 
We have, on one side, a scientific spirit, the highest 
intelligence, the utmost loyalty to truth. Infidelity 
has been met on its own ground of debate ; and the 
many works written in reply to its pretensions are 
among the noblest literary monuments. Over against 
all assaults on our religious faith, there stands a de- 
fense of the faith inscribed with the greatest names 
in philosophy, science, and letters. The doctrine of 
evolution, as put forth by Herbert Spencer, has been 
answered again and again in the arena of philosophical 



THE WITNESS OF UNBELIEF. 89 

debate. When Mr. Mill tells us that there are no 
first truths, and that we can never know anything but 
sensuous phenomena, we point him to the intuitional 
philosophy of Reid, Hamilton, Coleridge, and Hick- 
ock, which he must accept, or the basis of his own 
system is gone. The doctrine of Darwin and Haxley, 
that what we call intellectual and spiritual life is only 
the result of a highly developed bodily organization, 
has been overthrown many times by the greatest mas- 
ters of philosophical reasoning. "Properly speak- 
ing," says Julius Miiller, " there is no fixed transition 
from nature to spirit : spirit is not only distinct from 
the stages below it, but is essentially different from 
nature as a whole ; the difference is one not of degree 
merely, but of kind, for spirit is infinitely above 
nature, — an entirely new beginning, which can be 
explained neither by the stage of natural development 
next below it, nor by all the stages of natural devel- 
opment together." In answer to the atheism of Comte 
and his extreme followers, if their own inconsistencies 
be not a sufficient witness to the truth, we may bring 
the conclusion of the great Kantian school of thinkers, 
that the being of God is a truth which it is impossible 
to doubt. What the adherents of the positive philos- 
ophy say, of the extension of natural processes into 
the whole realm of human conduct, falls before the 
grand words of William von Humboldt : " There is 
a voice in the human soul which tells man that he 
is free and independent. In the natural world all 
things are enchained one with another, but man's con- 
sciousness of freedom makes him enter this world as 
the denizen of another ; for what is only earthly can 
never be free, and what is spiritual can never be sub- 
ject to necessity." Thus might I go on and show, 



90 SERMONS. 

did time permit, how every position wliich unbelief 
lias taken in the field of rational debate has been 
effectually turned. 

But these triumphant replies to the doubter are not 
what we need in dealing with him. So far as the 
actual persuading of the skeptic goes, their results are 
small. They are almost worthless practically, how- 
ever noble as masterpieces of reasoning and thought, 
for two reasons : (1) Those who believe them are con- 
vinced without them ; and (2) confirmed unbelievers 
lack the power which alone can appreciate them. (1) 
Religious skepticism would be proof of insanity to 
such a man as Jonathan Edwards, who could say of 
himself, " There seemed to me to be, as it were, a 
calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in 
almost everything. God's excellency. His wisdom, 
His purity and love, seemed to appear in everything ; 
in the sun, and moon, and stars; in the clouds and 
blue sky ; in the grass, flowers, and trees ; in the 
water and all nature." No doubt such men as Edward 
Payson would receive every word of our splendid 
Christian apologetics. Yet of what use could they all 
be to him ? who saw, with the open eye of his soul, 
what is within the veil ; and could say, " I have been 
for some weeks a happy inliabitant of the land of 
Beulah. The celestial city is full in my view. Its 
glories have been upon me, its breezes fan me, its 
odors are wafted to me, its sounds strike upon my 
ears, and its spirit is breathed into my heart." There 
is to-day a great company of new-born souls in our 
Christian churches, to which the grandest words of 
the defenders of the faith are meagre and tame. The 
most glowing descriptions of the being and attributes 
of God, and of the unseen world disclosed to us by 



THE WITNESS OF UNBELIEF. 91 

inspiration, do not come up to what they daily expe- 
rience. They know whom they have believed. Their 
faith rests on things which they have seen and handled 
for themselves. Unbelief is what they cannot under- 
stand. To attempt to answer it is, in their view, to 
reason with madmen. The life of God has entered 
into them, enabling them to lay hold of what the nat- 
ural man perceiveth not ; and hence all unbelief is to 
them irrational, and our meeting it in the arena of 
philosophical debate a piece of impertinence. (2) But 
it is no less true that our reasonings against unbelief 
are not needed by those who are spiritually alive, than 
that they fail to convince those who are spiritually 
dead. They do not live that transcendent life in 
which Edwards and Pay son rejoiced. Lacking, as 
they do, the spiritual wakefulness by which the truths 
of Christianity are made evident to the soul, our rea- 
soning is lost upon them. They treat us as the think- 
ers of Athens treated Paul in Mars Hill, — mocking 
the doctrines which to him were entirely reasonable, 
because they had none of his deep consciousness of 
the supernatural world. He was to them as an hea- 
then man and a publican, though he spoke the highest 
reason. He spoke to them out of a realm the knowl- 
edge of which had not been retained in their thoughts. 
He addressed a part of their nature which generations 
of worldliness had made torpid and dead. Christ met 
this same obstacle in his efforts to reason with men 
about spiritual things. He gave over trying to per- 
suade unbelievers ; saying, with just though terrible 
severity, " Cast not your pearls before swine, nor give 
that which is holy to dogs." He refused to reason 
with Nicodemus about the new birth. That ruler of 
the Jews, though learned and polished in his way, was 



92 SERMONS. 

yet of an earthly mind. There was nothing in him 
which responded to the voice of Christ. He could only 
say, " How can these things be ? " when Christ spoke 
of the operations of the Spirit. Christ ceased trying 
to persuade him, finding in him no spiritual life to 
which he could speak, and saying, " How shall you 
believe, if I tell you heavenly things ? " The light 
withdrew its shining, because the darkness in which it 
shone comprehended it not. 

2. Another argument, which we prize above all our 
reasonings when we deal with unbelief, is the Chris- 
tian life. Professor Christlieb's remark, that the 
Christian is the world's Bible, but repeats the teach- 
ing of Scripture which says, " Ye are living epistles ; 
ye are the light of the world." We sometimes com- 
pare Christ's followers, whom he has left here below 
while He pleads within the veil, to the moon, which 
shines in the absence of the sun. But the figure is 
inadequate ; for the moon only reflects the light of 
the sun, while Christ does in very deed dwell in the 
hearts of His people. He is formed within them. It 
is not they that live, but He liveth in them ; His life 
and His dying reign in their mortal body. There is 
this supernatural and divine element in every true 
Christian. He is a revelation of God to all who be- 
hold him. The great change which came over Henry 
Marty n, when he gave up his briUiant prospects at the 
university and devoted himself to the work of mis- 
sions, cannot be accounted for on natural principles. 
The conversions of St. Paul, of Colonel James Gar- 
diner, of Martin Luther, of John Bunyan, and their 
subsequent experiences of the new life in Christ, are 
an insoluble mystery to such as deny the supernatural. 
A world wholly above nature, divine and eternal, came 



THE WITNESS OF UNBELIEF, 93 

down into those men, and revealed itself to the aston- 
ished aaze of all who met them. This manifestation 
of a spiritual realm, in which God and Christ dwell, 
goes on through the ages, in the lives of the great 
company of the redeemed. Yet how small the power 
of this sublime argument on unbelievers ! It is only 
a testimony against them — oh, how often ! — where 
we look to see it bring them to repentance. To me, 
brethren, it is one of the saddest facts connected with 
the life of Christ, that so few of those who saw Him, 
and heard Him speak, and beheld His mighty works, 
believed on His name. We read that He Himself 
marveled at this unbelief ; and He refused to teach, 
and work miracles, before the men who were so dead 
to spiritual things. What a comment, on the lapsed 
condition of the souls to which He came, that all the 
disciples in and about Jerusalem, whom His wondrous 
life and ministry had made, could be gathered into 
one small room about the time of Pentecost, being in 
number only an hundred and twenty ! Think it not 
strange that the converting power of our life is small, 
if that of the Son of God Himself bore no greater 
fruit. All this glorious testimony is made weak 
through the spiritual blindness of those to whom it is 
addressed. The darkness does not comprehend the 
light. The natural man perceiveth not the things 
which be of God. Their worldliness, like the garish 
day, makes invisible to men the constellations of divine 
truth which circle and roll in beauteous order all 
through the eternity lying so deep and vast about 
them. Such is the spiritual condition of all unbe- 
lievers. In vain do we reason or argue with them ; 
in vain do they see the power of Christianity displayed 
in the lives of believers ; in vain do we tell them that 



94 SERMONS. 

tlie religion of Christ is adapted to meet the deepest 
wants of their natures. Their spiritual life is too 
feeble to appreciate any of these persuasions to faith. 
We speak wisdom among the perfect ; but to the Jew 
it is a stumbling-block, and to the Greek foolishness. 
What a witness against men is their own unbelief ! 
How it confirms the truth of their deadness of soul, 
out of which their unbelief grows, that the sublime 
alignment which the history of the church offers them 
leaves them unconvinced! The eye of the spirit in 
them is closed up. They doubt the existence of the 
great world of religious truth, of which this temporal 
world is only a poor shadow, because they have not 
the power to see it. Oh that some man of God might 
pray for them as Elisha prayed for his servant in 
Dothan ! then should their eyes be opened to see, with 
the prophet's own blessed vision, the horses and char- 
iots of God in the mountains round about them. 

3. How, then, are unbelievers to be convinced? 
What shall scatter the mists of skepticism ? What 
shall drive infidelity and atheism out of the world ? 
The occasion of the evil suggests the nature of the 
remedy. " Not by might, nor by power, but by my 
Spirit," saith the Lord. The grand need of men, in 
order that they may escape from their bondage to 
doubt, is spiritual quickening. They doubt because 
they are dead in trespasses and sins ; and they will 
believe just so far as they are raised up out of this 
grave, and made alive unto God, by the washing of 
regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost. 
This is the first resurrection, which they must expe- 
rience in order that they may believe in the unseen 
things which to us are the truest of all truths. It is 
clear, therefore, why Christ and the apostles make so 



THE WITNESS OF UNBELIEF. 95 

much of the second birth. Nothing is plainer than 
that they did not expect men to believe, in any saving 
sense, till their souls had been begotten again from 
the dead. This faith of theirs is uttered in the 
strongest possible way by Paul, where he says, " No 
man can call Christ Lord save by the Spirit of God." 
The dear truth that we are God's children is wholly 
unknown to us till tliis same Spirit enters into our 
hearts and enables us to cry, "Abba, Father." Not 
a Christian grace or virtue is there in the noblest 
character, but we must view it as one of the fruits of 
the Spirit. No power of argument, no power of ex- 
ample, but His renewing work in the souls of men, 
convinces them of sin, of righteousness, of judgment 
to come. Of all the proper names which we find in 
the Bible, it seems to me, brethren, that none is more 
befitting than the one which Christ gave to the Spirit. 
He called Him the Comforter. "• The Comforter, 
which is the Holy Ghost, the Father will send in my 
name." God has always appeared as the Comforter 
of His people, adapting His aid to their present ex- 
igency. And the exigency now upon us is one in 
which nothing but the Spirit, changing men's hearts, 
can give us any comfort or hope. We are bidden to 
preach the gospel to every creature, until the world 
shall be full of the glory of God. But we find in 
men no power to receive our message. The carrying 
out of the promise, which began to be fulfilled on the 
day of Pentecost, alone is able to save us from despair. 
We go on proclaiming what the natural man per- 
ceiveth not, knowing that the Spirit is poured out on 
all flesh. Great is the comfort of His presence ; He 
is almighty ; nothing can withstand His power. Were 
it not for Him, we should have no hope of any soul. 



96 SERMONS. 

But witli His aid, brooding over tlie dead heart, and 
making a place in it for the truth, we are girded all 
the time with a joyous courage. We preach to the 
scorner, to the sullen doubter, to the worldling, to the 
slave of vice, to the artful opposer, yea, and to those 
almost persuaded, with one and the same confidence : 
for it is not we that speak, but God speaketh by us ; 
with Him all things are possible ; the words which we 
utter are the Spirit's weapons, and in His hand are 
mighty to the pulling down of strongholds. Miracles, 
as technically defined, may be no longer needed in the 
church ; but in a larger sense they are needed, and 
are all the time taking place, and will continue to be 
indispensable till the world is converted to God. The 
sons of God did not shout for joy with more wonder 
in the first morning of creation than the angels still 
rejoice when He that was dead is alive again. Regen- 
eration is the work of God. Repentance and faith are 
supernatural acts. We are God's workmanship, re- 
created in Christ Jesus unto good works. It is as this 
blessed renewal goes on in society, in men's hearts, 
in the literature and business and legislation of the 
world, that the new heaven and earth, in which right- 
eousness is to dwell, shall be revealed. Our most be- 
coming attitude is that of prayer for the coming of 
the Spirit, my brethren, while we strive to extend 
around us, through all human pursuits and interests, 
the blessed reign of Christ. We prophesy in a valley 
of dry bones, even as Ezekiel did ; and, like him, we 
shall be mighty only as we lift up the voice, " Come 
from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these 
slain, that they may live." 



THE WITNESS OF UNBELIEF. 97 

''Spirit of power and might, behold 
A world by sin destroyed ! 
Creator Spirit, as of old 
Move on the formless void. 

" Give Thou the word : that healing sound 
Shall quell the deadly strife. 
And earth again, like Eden crowned, 
Produce the tree of life." 



WORSHIP AS A MEANS OF SPIRITUAL 
CULTURE.! 

God is a Spirit : and they that worship Him must worship Him in 
spirit and in truth. — John iv. 24. 

My dear People, Members of the Old South 
Church and Society : — You have erected here " a 
house for the assembling yourselves [themselves] to- 
gether publicly to worship God ; " and it is with great 
joy that we are met this evening to set it apart for 
that solemn use, in the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. 

The important thing in the worship of God is that 
it furnishes to us our principal means of spiritual cul- 
ture ; and in that light I now invite you to consider it. 

Our blessed Lord teaches us, in the text, that all 
true worship of God is essentially a spiritual exercise. 
They that worship God " must worship Him in spirit." 
The service cannot be rendered by any of our lower 
faculties, but only by our highest faculties ; by that in 
us which is spiritual, which is immortal, which can 
overleap the bounds of time and lay hold of eternal 
things, which came directly from God, and partakes 
of His own divine nature. 

That we all have in us this high spiritual nature, 
constituting us the children of God, I need not prove 
to you who are gathered here to-night. You believe 
in it as thoroughly as did the men to whom St. Paul 

^ Preached at the dedication of the Old South, December 15, 1875. 



SPIRITUAL CULTURE. 99 

preached in Mars Hill, whose own poets had taught 
them that they were " God's offspring." A noble joy 
thrills you, responsive to the great words of Scripture 
which declare that God is " the Father of spirits ; " 
which represent God as saying, " Let us make man in 
our image, after our likeness ; " which teach that the 
divine life breathed into us makes us living souls ; 
which say that God has crowned us with glory and 
honor, and set us over the works of His hands. 

This spiritual nature in us may be in bondage. It 
may lie dead under an incrustation of worldliness and 
sin. It may need to be quickened by the power of 
the Holy Ghost, and delivered through faith in our 
Lord Jesus Christ, in order that we may be fully con- 
scious of it, so as to look up into God's face and cry, 
" Abba, Father." But that we have it, that it is our 
essential attribute and the peculiar glory of our race, 
nothing can ever make us doubt. God is a Spirit, 
and man is a spirit ; and inasmuch as the worship of 
God is an employment which engages our spirits in 
their most lively and vigorous exercise, such worship 
is to us the most important of aU the duties we are 
called upon to perform. 

^ You provide means for the education and training 
of the lower departments of man's nature, — the dis- 
cipline being carefully adapted in each case to the 
end which is sought. (1) Great attention is paid, for 
instance, to the wants of man's physical nature. In 
proof of this I need but point you to the gymnasium, 
the riding-school, the skating-rink, the play-grounds 
and parks, so carefully guarded in our large cities. 
Parents in their homes, and teachers in the schools, 
are careful to provide whatever may tend to the bodily 
growth, health, and vigor of the young. Ventilation, 



100 SERMONS. 

drainage, wliat we shall eat and drink, and what we 
shall wear, are subjects of earnest study and advice. 
To prevent disease, rather than to cure it, is the aim 
of the high-minded physician. Boards of health are 
organized to consider what shall be done with infec- 
tious diseases and malarious districts ; and vital statis- 
tics are gathered in the hope of leading to measures 
which shall promote the physical vigor of races and 
nations. We recognize the claims of this care for 
men's bodies even in the house of God, our churches 
being supplied with pure air, warmth, light, and com- 
fortable sittings, as they were not at an earlier day. 
Experience has taught us that soundness of body may 
be an aid to spiritual health; and we provide that 
physical comfort which the civilization of our time 
demands, in order that the soul, unhindered by a 
feeble or weary body, may be free to listen, and praise, 
and adore. (2) Consider, again, what pains we take 
to provide for the intellectual culture of both old and 
young. The largest item in our tax-bills, usually, is 
that which goes to support the public schools. Not 
only are universities founded and maintained at great 
cost, in which students are fitted for the learned pro- 
fessions, and where special studies into every depart- 
ment of knowledge are pushed to the utmost, but a 
large class of lecturers and writers are kept busy 
popularizing this knowledge, that it may come into our 
homes and be scattered broadcast, to be the food of 
our intellects, and to save them from degeneracy amid 
the wear and tear of our daily life. And this careful- 
ness for mental health and growth, too, is duly honored 
in our New England churches. The preacher is ex- 
pected to offer to his people from week to week, not 
mere platitudes, or exhortations which are stale and 



SPIRITUAL CULTURE. 101 

superficial, but the fruits of his prolonged and earnest 
thought, — patient studies of the profoundest subjects, 
which shall enlighten the understanding, and stimulate 
and feed the love of truth. 

Once more, (3) recall the pains which we take for 
the aesthetic culture of ourselves and our children. 
Our homes and our public buildings are planned with 
an eye to their beauty as well as their utility. Not 
only do we try to make them convenient and comfort- 
able within, but tasteful both within and without. We 
value a superb picture or piece of statuary, and any 
exquisite furniture, for their refining influence upon 
our artistic nature. We multiply as we are able, in 
our dwellings and in public museums, these silent 
teachers, which shape our taste to their noble and 
faultless forms. The bald life of an earlier day does 
not satisfy us. We are continually breaking over the 
restraints of our forefathers, feeling that their plain 
ways were due quite as much to want of aesthetic spirit 
as to their high morals. Not only architecture, paint- 
ing, and sculpture, but music in all its forms, is prized 
as a means to this aesthetic culture. We also fill our 
bookcases with the finest works of imagination, in 
both poetry and prose. And our social and domestic 
life, our tables, our dress, our equipages, and neigh- 
borly intercourse, are shaped with a view to making 
them a part of this artistic school. Nature joins with 
human skill in providing for this aesthetic discipline. 
She gives us her midday glories, her rising and setting 
suns, her soft shadows on the distant slopes and plains, 
her gleaming cascades, her misty cataracts, her mossy 
and dripping glens, her echoing caverns, her noisy 
brooks, her overarching and whispering trees, her 
grotesque forms, her bald cliffs, her sky-kissing moun- 



102 SERMONS. 

tain ranges, with their awful gorges between. The 
roof of her temjple is fretted with golden fire, and its 
floor inlaid with malachite and pearl. We hear her 
feathered choirs in the leafy groves ; the solemn voice 
of her immensity comes up to us from the sea. This 
vast provision for our aesthetic culture, which we find 
in nature and society, is not unduly reflected in our 
best houses of worship. Their architecture and dec- 
orations, their music, their ceremonial and forms of 
speech, will prove a clog to the human spirit, in its 
efforts to connnune with God, if conspicuous for their 
ugliness, or if they offend that aesthetic standard which 
our common civilization has set up. 

Such are the means furnished for the education of 
the lower departments of our nature. I recognize 
them all as proper and necessary; but it is not for 
them that I plead to-night. There is, within the 
body, something which is more than the body. Man's 
noblest capacity is not intellectual or aesthetic. When 
we have mounted to this height, we but stand on the 
threshold of that in him which is his true glory : the 
holy of holies is yet far above. Man is a spirit ; he 
was made in the image of God, and in that divine 
nature is the true sanctuary of our being. It is for 
the culture of this that I plead; that this may be 
quickened and unfolded within us, we are commanded 
to worship God. 

When the patriarch was returning home from the 
East, being about to meet his brother Esau, whose 
anger he dreaded, his greatest care was for the safety 
of that which he held dearest. He sent forward, as 
first to meet the danger, his flocks, led by his servants, 
having separated them into several droves. Then, far 
behind these, he placed the handmaids and their chil- 



SPIRITUAL CULTURE. 103 

dren ; and after them, yet farther in the rear, went 
Leah and her children ; and last of all, in the place 
of least peril, came his beloved Rachel with his son 
Joseph. And he said, " If Esau come to one com- 
pany and smite it, then the other company which is 
left shall escape." Now, dear friends, let us not 
reverse tliis wise order in caring for our various capa- 
cities and wants. If anything in us must be risked, 
let it be the body, and the intellect, and the aesthetic 
nature, rather than the soul. Let us first provide for 
the safety, and for the growth and culture, of that in 
us which makes us God's children. By this arrange- 
ment I believe that we shall not only save what is 
most precious in us, but all else which we hold dear ; 
even as Jacob, who cared first for the child of prom- 
ise, was permitted to see his whole family and all his 
substance delivered. St. Paul prays for his brethren 
that their soul, body, and spirit may be preserved unto 
the coming of the Lord ; and experience teaches us 
that it is by caring for the higher interest that we 
secure the lower. God has so ordered it that blessed- 
ness and joy flow downward. If our manhood or 
womanhood be alive and flourishing at its top, all its 
lower branches will partake of the vigor and health. 

But I greatly fear that many of us have fallen into 
sad neglect as regards this culture of the soul. What 
say the rehgious habits of a large class of citizens ? 
Can they be said to have any religious habits ? With 
all their wealth, and intelligence, and social refinement, 
are they not totally regardless of their spiritual cul- 
ture ? We hear and read a great deal about preaching 
the gospel to the poor. But are not the really poor, 
in our day, those who say that they are rich, and in 
need of nothing ? Too many of these, alas ! are " the 



104 SERMONS. 

neglected classes ; and they are suffering from the 
worst form of neglect, which is self-neglect. We 
thank God for all the bright exceptions ; but I leave 
it for you to say, dear friends, whether or not those 
of our citizens most blessed with temporal prosperity 
are most constant and earnest in their devotion to 
spiritual things. Do not the great religious awaken- 
ings pass by these for the most part, and bless the 
common people? Do not the migratory habits of 
many, now in one place of sojourn and now in another, 
but so little of their time at home, tempt them to be 
irregular in their worship and communion? If any 
of us are conscious that we have thought too little of 
our spiritual culture in our devotion to other interests, 
let us here resolve that we will correct that fault. 
Why should our humanity be dead at the top ? We 
are alive to every temporal interest, and why should 
we not be alive toward God ? Why should that which 
is noblest in us be dwarfed, or fall into decay and 
death for want of exercise ? Why should we cast our 
greatness from us ? why take the crown of glory from 
our heads and tread it into the mire ? 

Now I do not mean to say that public worship is 
our only means of spiritual culture ; but it is the cen- 
tral point, and the vitalizing source, of whatever other 
means we may employ. Men cease to care about the 
discipline of their spiritual powers, and grow gradu- 
ally into the neglect of it in every form, when they 
have no more desire to assemble publicly for the wor- 
ship of God. I am glad the good lady who gave this 
church her parcel of land put these golden words into 
her form of bequest. They point to the grandest 
object for which man can live ; they express the 
noblest employment in which he can engage. 



SPIRITUAL CULTURE. 105 

And just here we see the foundation on which the 
Christian pulpit, with its two sacraments, forever rests. 
It is the centre of this whole system of spiritual dis- 
cipline ; and I have no fears for its permanence and 
power, whatever its abuses may be, so long as men do 
not forget their highest and most sacred want. If it 
were possible to destroy the influence of the pulpit, it 
should have been a by-word and hissing long ago. Its 
sacred function has been most shamefuUy forgotten. 
It has been degraded to the level of the platform and 
the stage. Notoriety and fame have been sought by 
its occupants rather than the salvation of souls. It 
has been judged by its success in selling or renting 
the pews. Nothing is too vapid, too crude, or too 
wild to be tolerated in it, if so be that itching ears are 
pleased. Yet the spiritual thirst in us makes us cling 
to it, — as trees cling to the storm-swept rock, embrac- 
ing its bald sides with their living roots, while they 
seek the nourishment of the good soil on which it 
rests. If we, whom God has set to preach the gospel, 
are true to this divine thirst in men, we have nothing 
to fear. The time can never come when our occupa- 
tion shall be gone. It will be appreciated more and 
more, as men more deeply feel their spiritual wants. 
Our grand business is not with their secular interests, 
but with that in them which makes them heirs of eter- 
nity and the children of God. Let us take a lesson 
from other classes of workers, and be as devoted to 
our high calling as they are to their earthly vocations. 
Let us speak to that in men which can never die. 
Let us bring them the water of life and the bread of 
heaven. Let us do what we can to keep them from 
going maimed and dwarfed before the Great White 
Throne ; what we can to present them, in that august 



106 SERMONS, 

Presence, developed to the utmost in their spiritual 
nature, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. 

Now the one object to which men's minds should be 
turned, in order to this spiritual culture, is God Him- 
self. He is a Spirit, as our text teaches ; and there- 
fore He cannot be approached, or His attributes be 
contemplated, save in that exercise of our spiritual 
faculties which shall lift them up, and unfold and 
beautify them. Our spirits are placed over the works 
of His hands ; and if they turn back on those works 
to find nutriment, they necessarily grow downward; 
they become like a vine dropping away from the noble 
trellis built above it, and soiling itself by groveling in 
the dust beneath. It is so important to us that we 
should see God, and grow upward around Him, that 
He has made His being an omnipresent and self-evi- 
dent truth to our minds. He is not far from every 
one of us ; and we cannot go from His presence, or 
escape from His Spirit. He reveals Himself to babes. 
We believe in Him before we believe in anything else ; 
and nothing else more shocks the unperverted mind 
than the attempt to prove that there is a God. As 
well attempt to prove to it the existence of the air 
which it breathes, or of the sunlight in which it is 
glad. The heaven in which God dwells lies all about 
us ; and we cannot help believing in Him, save as our 
spiritual eye is weakened and dimmed. Only too 
quickly, alas ! do " the shades of our prison-house " 
gather about " the growing boy." And yet our belief 
in God, which is part of the original and most pre- 
cious ornament of the soul, cannot be utterly effaced 
by " listlessness " or " mad endeavor," or by " all that 
is at enmity with joy." The divine dream is in us 
even while we slumber ; and it is by the quickening 



SPIRITUAL CULTURE, 107 

and right culture of our benumbed spirits that our 
God will return to us in all the glory of open vision. 
His own life, breathed into us by the Holy Ghost, 
awakes us to His presence ; and in the yearning of 
that new life we go out after BUim till we are filled 
with His fullness. What a life was that which holy 
men of old lived in God, out of which they wrote 
books, rude and savage though they were, which are 
the wonder of the world ! This universe was to them 
God^s vesture, His presence the inward light by which 
they read its tracery of symbols and letters every- 
where. God created the heavens and the earth. God 
made man. God appointed the sun to rule by day, 
and the moon by night. God made the stars. God 
gathered the waters together. God said, " Let there 
be hght." God made the firmament. God said, " Let 
the dry land appear." This great name is the pillar 
of fire which goes before us all our way through the 
sacred record. The patriarchs, pitching their tents 
beneath the oaks, and leading their flocks by the 
water-brooks; Israel in Egypt, and in the desert, in 
the midst of wonders and signs ; judges and kings, 
prophets and psalmists, and in later times holy evan- 
gelists and apostles, — were made to feel that the one 
grand fact of the universe is God. The heavens de- 
clared to them the glory of God. The fact that the 
earth is full of God's wisdom was what gave it value 
in their eyes. To them the light was not a thing by 
itseK, but the garment with which God covered Him- 
self ; and the transfigured clouds charmed them, not 
by reason of their own splendors, but because they 
were God's pa\alion. The waters were the place 
where God laid the beams of His chambers, and the 
winds would be nothing if God did not walk on their 



108 SERMONS. 

wings. The trees of Lebanon were God's trees ; and 
the springs, and the rocks, and the grass, and the birds, 
the night and the day, the sea and sky, and hills and 
valleys, were the works of God's wisdom and power. 
Everything that had breath was called upon to praise 
God. The vapor and hail and snow were a part of 
the divine anthem. To the hills it was said, Kejoice 
on every side ; and to the floods. Clap your hands. 
The Bible is God's book, not only because He inspired 
men to write it, but also because He is its one vast 
theme. His presence all through it is what makes it 
the Book of books ; and we need nothing else so much 
as to find Him in it, and to cleave fast unto Him with 
a solemn joy, as those old writers did. This divine 
society, and steady gazing on the face of God, made 
them wondrously great in all their spiritual faculties, 
however dwarfed in other things. And why should 
not a like divine contact do for us, in our measure, 
what it did for them ? It will do that same blessed 
work for us ; it will unfold and transfigure us in spirit, 
as it did them. God has given the appropriate means 
for our education in every other respect, but for the 
education of our spirits He offers us Himself. Because 
we are His children, because we are above His other 
works, so that they can never do anything for the 
spirit but draw it downward. He unveils His gracious 
face. His benign presence surrounds us. " Look 
unto Me, all the ends of the earth," is His loving ap- 
peal. The divine possibilities in us throb with life 
the moment we touch Him ; and by pressing boldly 
to His seat, and gazing steadfastly upon Him, we are 
changed into the same image from glory to glory. 

And it is by worshiping God that this great boon 
— tlie education of the soul — is to be ours. I do 



SPIRITUAL CULTURE. 109 

not mean to decry all inquiries about God, or all 
studies into His government and councils. Yet God 
does not become to us that which we most need while 
we approach Him in a merely speculative, critical, or 
inquisitive mood. It is in the attitude of worship 
that we must meet Him. Our spirits must have a 
longing unto Him. They must be open to the bread 
which He gives, and receptive of it. They must feel 
within themselves an emptiness which the tides of His 
mighty love alone fill. The soul which truly wor- 
ships is not merely passive. Nothing could be more 
intensely active. Yet it is receptive ; the peculiarity 
of its state is, that it is open to receive the floods of 
life which flow down into it out of the fatherly heart 
of God. Nor is this receptive attitude peculiar to 
worship. There must be somewhat of it, or there can 
be no gain to the mind in any respect. Lord Bacon 
teaches us that we cannot know Nature till we come 
to her to be taught. Humility is the threshold of 
every temple of knowledge which we seek to enter. 
We must not affect to lead, but must be willing to be 
led, if we would make the least progress. Truth flies 
away from the inhospitable mind ; but she loves to 
visit and fill the open soul. If this be so in all the 
lower sciences, how much more when we come to the 
knowledge of God! Who can be otherwise than 
lowly, reverent, and emptied of self, when he meets 
the infinite God face to face? In his hunger and 
thirst of spirit, how sweet to him to open the door, 
that God may come in and sup with him, and he with 
God ! And if adoration, reverence, worship, be the 
feeling which God's presence is fitted to stir in each 
soul, how much deeper the emotion when we are as- 
sembled in large numbers ! We are quickened, soft- 



110 SERMONS. 

ened, laid open in spirit to the incoming of God, by 
the exercises of public worship. Then it is that God 
comes down upon us as rain upon the mown grass, as 
showers that water the earth. Worn and jaded at the 
end of the week, our spirits are like a stretch of sea- 
shore at low tide, — the river channels empty, the har- 
bor bare, the boats and ships lying upon their sides on 
the sand banks or in the mire. But when we are met 
together in the house of God, all our souls turned unto 
Him as the eyes of a maiden to her mistress, the 
scene begins to be changed. The incoming waves of 
divine love meet our spiritual yearnings. We are no 
longer empty, but filled with the fullness of God. Our 
sense of weariness departs. The cloud of worldly 
cares recedes. That which is greatest in us, which is 
divine and cannot die, begins to be refreshed. We 
forget our sins, our infirmities, our errors of judgment 
and conduct, while we bathe ourselves in the inflowing 
life of God. The capacities of our spirit, its larger 
channels, and each smallest and most inmost recess, 
receive more of that life than they can hold. The 
blessed refreshment rises over the banks. The whole 
plain of our humanity is enflooded ; and everything 
upon us, or within or around, turns out its beauty, 
and rests and rejoices in a brightness which is fairer 
than the sunlight, in a dawn which is clearer and 
sweeter than any summer morning. Whatever our 
patient studies, and our investigations of divine truth, 
may do for us, when we begin to worship God our 
souls are like the earth to which the sun is coming 
back after the long winter. The winding-sheet of 
spiritual death disappears ; the icy fetters of worldli- 
ness are melted off ; our deeper instincts feel the ge- 
nial warmth ; each loftiest faculty in us covers itself 
with verdure, and every tenderest possibility of the 



SPIRITUAL CULTURE. Ill 

soul springs forth anew. Our whole higher nature 
grows and blooms, and our peace and joy are full in 
that Fatherly Presence in which we live and move. 

Such is the sacred end — the high spiritual culture 
attainable only through the devout worship of God 
-^to which we dedicate this pulpit and its two sacra- 
ments, one on either hand ; to which we dedicate its 
pews and aisles, its storied windows, its carved and 
frescoed walls, its many-voiced organ, its timbers and 
roof which bend so lovingly over us from above, — 
praying that all who worship here may grow to be, like 
its own massive and lofty tower, larger in their man- 
hood, and more beautified and adorned in those parts 
which are nearest to the sky. 

That this great blessing of spiritual culture might 
come to you and your children, and to as many as 
choose to cast in their lot with you, you have under- 
gone the sore trial of a removal from your old to this 
new house of worship. How slowly, how unwillingly, 
and how sadly you yielded to that trial, is known to 
yourselves and to God. Some of you bear names 
which stand on the first records of our venerable 
church. You had associations with the former place, 
tender memories of it, and a loving attachment to it, 
which those who have criticised your action before the 
public cannot understand. If they had known how 
faintly, and but partially, their love for the ancient 
sanctuary reflected yours, I believe they would have 
tried to strengthen rather than weaken your hands, 
seeing that your love made you slow to act, and that 
you acted only as you were urged forward by the all- 
compelling hand of God. 

There you were surrounded by a cloud of secular 
and patriotic memories, which obscured the spiritual 
history of our church ; but here that spiritual history 



112 SERMONS. 

may come out into tlie light, and be made an incentive 
to soul-culture upon you and your families. There 
you had no convenience whatsoever for a Sunday- 
school, for a prayer-meeting, or for a social gathering, 
all of which you are amply provided for here. There, 
as you found and as others found, worshiping assem- 
blies could not be gathered after nightfall ; and even 
your Sabbath worship was often marred by rude 
noises, necessary or unnecessary, in the streets : but 
what was yearly growing more unfavorable there will, 
we believe, yearly grow more favorable here. There 
you were isolated from other Christian churches, lack- 
ing all opportunity to welcome them to your sanctuary, 
for those general religious meetings occurring for the 
most part on secular days, which enter so largely into 
the present methods of the church ; but here you can 
take your proper place in those evangelistic efforts 
which are common to the entire brotherhood, and so 
do your part toward fulfilling that blessed ministry 
by which each member is to supply unto the other 
members something which they lack, that the whole 
body may make increase to the edifying of itself in 
love. 

Take this building, O thou great Head of the 
Church, to whom we now bring it. Take it, and take 
us with it. Make it thine own temple, and make us 
thy living temples. Use it for the glory of thy King- 
dom, and keep us the loyal subjects of that Kingdom. 
Spare it only so long as it shall serve thy loving pur- 
poses, and spare and bless us only that we may de- 
clare thy name. When its noble walls must crumble, 
teach thy people to bow in the faith of something 
better to come; and when our spirits must be un- 
clothed of their earthly house, may they rise to be 
clothed upon with the house which is from heaven ! 



NEW-BORN SOULS THE GLORY OF THE 
CHURCH.i 

And of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was bom in her. — 
PsAiMS Ixxxvii. 5. 

The assertion which these words contain is made 
three times in the brief Psalm from which they are 
taken. The Psahn itself is a celebration of the glory 
of Zion ; and that glory is made to spring out of the 
single fact that Zion is the birthplace of men. Nor 
is there any reference to natural or physical birth, as 
we shall see if we examine the words. It is as the 
birthplace of souls that Zion is celebrated. Out of 
her shall go forth a quickening power which shall 
touch and renew the spirits of men. This power is 
to reach Egypt and Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, and 
Ethiopia ; so that it shall be said of the dweller in the 
most remote of those countries. This man was born 
in Zion. If any church, as for instance this church, 
sends an influence to the other side of the globe, 
which there brings men to Christ, those men will 
regard this church as their spiritual birthplace. And 
so, too, will God regard it, not only now, but when He 
numbers His jewels in the end of the world. The 
language of the Psalm is, "The Lord shall count, 
when He writeth up the people, that this man was 
born there." 

^ Preached December 26, 1875, the Sabbath after the dedication of 
the church. 



114 SERMONS. 

We are therefore invited to consider the fact that 
Zion, either the whole Church or our own local Church, 
is distinctively the place where souls are converted to 
Christ. The glory of our Church is proportioned to 
its success in this work. It is in view of such a work 
that the Psalmist says, " Glorious things are spoken 
of thee, O city of God." The honor of our Church, 
throughout all time and in eternity, is to arise from 
the fact that God can point to one, and another, and 
another of the mighty host of the redeemed, and say, 
" This man and that man was born in her." 

It will help us to feel the force of this statement if 
we consider a little how various places in our world 
have been ennobled by having the names of great and 
good men associated with them. Though the state- 
ment itself refers to spiritual things, there is in it an 
analogy to our more common and temporal life. How 
many localities there are in our world which we cross 
oceans to visit; whose names are household words, 
never spoken without sending a thrill through our 
hearts, yet in which we should not take the least inter- 
est but for the men who were born in them, or who 
there labored ! The little district of Ayrshire, in Scot- 
land, owes its fame to our admiration, our love, and 
our pity for the poet Robert Burns. Take his name 
away from it, and its charm would be gone. A statue 
was recently erected at Bedford in honor of John 
Bunyan ; and how many of us would know that there 
is such a town in England but for the fact that Bun- 
yan made it glorious by there writing, in its jail and 
in his blindness, the " Pilgrim's Progress " ? The 
name of Kidderminster would be commonplace to us, 
associated as it is with the manufacture of a certain 
cheap style of carpet, were it not lifted up and en- 



NEW-BORN SOULS. 115 

nobled by the fact that Richard Baxter there preached, 
and wrote his " Saint's Everlasting Rest." Stratford- 
upon-Avon is an ancient town, with buildings in it 
which appeal to the traveler's love of antiquity ; but 
that which gives it its peculiar glory is the name of 
Shakspeare. Its people would sooner part with all 
else which distinguishes it than with this single treas- 
ure. The power of men to make illustrious the cities 
and countries which gave them birth is felt amid the 
ruins of Athens and of ancient Rome. How men 
search for the slightest traces of Homer ; how they 
burrow for the palaces of Nimrod and Priam ! What 
joy thrills the world of scholars when a Rosetta stone, 
a Moabite stone, or other key to some ancient alphabet 
is found ! It is human footprints amid the remains of 
old civilizations, the evidence that men there strug- 
gled, and great minds thought and wrote, which make 
them venerable in our eyes. Go into any modern 
hamlet, even of our own land, and the first boast of 
its people will be the distinguished men it has given 
to the world. New Hampshire can never forget that 
it was the birthplace of Daniel Webster, nor Virginia 
that she produced Washington and Jefferson. The 
pride of our own city is, not her material prosperity, 
great as that may be, but the men born here, in every 
generation since the days of Franklin, whom the na- 
tions have delighted to honor. 

But I need not follow this path any further. 
Enough has been said to make clear the fact that 
towns and cities and countries become illustrious just 
to the extent that they raise up men who confer great 
benefits on the race. They cannot depend on their 
wealth or their antiquity to make them respected. It 
is the names of those born in them, names shining as 



116 SERMONS. 

stars, which make them glorious in the eyes of the 
world. Whatever else there may be in them which 
invites our notice, gathers all its charm from these. 

Now this is the analogy which runs underneath the 
statement in our text. The serious lesson pressed 
home to us is, that our Church can grow beautiful and 
venerable only as it is the instrument of salvation to 
men ; that it must do its proper work ; that it cannot 
make itself respected by anything which appeals but 
to the senses ; that God will bless it, and men will 
venerate it, only as they are able to point to new-born 
souls and say, " This man and that man was born in 
her." 

But while we observe this analogy between the 
Church and common history, we are also to note a dif- 
ference — a difference which is greatly in the Church's 
favor. It is exceptional men — men conspicuous for 
their great talents and achievements — who make 
their birthplaces famous in common history. But 
whosoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater 
than these. Zion is not beholden for her glory to 
those who are great in human history. On the things 
which are least honorable she bestows more abundant 
honor, with a divine scorn of earthly distinctions. To 
be an immortal spirit is itseK so great a thing that 
other greatness vanishes away in view of it. There is 
no exchange for the soul — for any soul. What shall 
it profit a man, though he be the weakest and hum- 
blest of men, if he gain the whole world at the cost 
of his soul ? Therefore not only those disciples whom 
common history honors, but all others who are truly 
born of God, make Zion glorious. And hence it be- 
comes purely a question of numbers, — not of numbers 
who are merely drawn together externally, but who 



NEW-BORN SOULS. 117 

hear, who obey ; who, in deed and in truth, bow to 
Christ as their King and the Saviour of their souls. 
No one could do more for the glory of the Church 
than the poor widow did when she gave her two mites. 
All souls are infinitely precious ; and in view of this 
truth, the disciple most honored after the manner of 
men can well afford to stand on a level with the least 
honored. The same divine Comforter has begotten 
them all from the dead. God's well-beloved Son is 
the elder Brother of them all. There is no difference, 
but they all shine with an equal lustre, if they are 
indeed lively stones in the temple of our God. Are 
you the lowliest of God's children? O my dear 
friend, just believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and 
come vdih. us after Him, and your birth into the king- 
dom here shall more honor our church than all this 
building with its goodly stones. I love to think that 
this peculiarity of the Church — all distinctions van- 
ishing, and each one alike glorifying it before God — 
is observed in the sublime descriptions of heaven by 
St. John. There all the worshipers, however lifted 
up one above another for a little while on earth, con- 
stitute the one blessed host who bow before the throne 
of God and the Lamb. John saw that there were an 
hundred and forty and four thousand of them ; but 
none of their names were given. Nothing was said 
of Da\dd and the other great men of Judah, but only 
that of the tribe of Judah were sealed twelve thou- 
sand; nothing was said of Samuel 2.nd other great 
men of his tribe, but only that there were sealed 
of his tribe twelve thousand. And so on through 
the remaininGf tribes. Each member of the brio-ht- 
robed com-psmj is designated simply as a unit in the 
whole number, as this man or that man, with a sub- 



118 SERMONS. 

lime disregard of all temporary distinctions. Every 
one of them is so precious that no one can be valued 
above another. They are all stars in the Redeemer's 
crown. Severally, and in clusters, they constitute the 
glory of the Church in which they were born. 

Have you ever thought, my dear Christian brethren 
and friends, that a time is coming, in the far-off cycles 
of eternity, when these births of souls in the Church 
will be almost the only memorial left of this present 
world? You remember Christ said that His kingdom 
is not of this world ; and in a great many places we 
read that the earth which we now inhabit, and the 
heavens around it, are to pass away. " They shall 
pass away with a great noise," says the apostle Peter ; 
" and the elements shall melt with fervent heat ; and 
the earth, and the works which are therein, shall be 
burned up." The solemn fact that what we now call 
the world is not to endure, but to perish when its pur- 
pose is fulfilled, our Lord notices again and again, 
and especially in the words to His disciples when He 
wept over Jerusalem. His kingdom, as all Scripture 
teaches, is the only everlasting kingdom, His govern- 
ment the only one of which there shall be no end. 
And you, if you obey Christ, are the subjects of that 
government ; you, in virtue of your union to the Son of 
God, are citizens of that kingdom. And you shall stand 
before that divine King in His imperishable realm, 
when the great globe, with its cloud-capped towers 
and gorgeous palaces, has disappeared from view. In 
that clear and eternal day, you will be this poor earth's 
memorial. You will stand there as its monument, and 
will recall it to the minds of the heavenly choirs, as 
you move about in their shining company. Great 
events of a temporal nature, and volumes of secular 



NEW-BORN SOULS. 119 

history, now filling so large a space in our horizon, 
bear no relation to that endless • life. As a vesture 
they change, and shall be changed. They shall be 
folded up and laid aside ; but God's years cannot fail, 
and our new life which we have in Him shall never 
end. Renewed and purified souls, dwelling in that 
bright country, will forever keep fresh the names of 
the churches on earth where they first tasted the good 
word of God. Those places most intimately con- 
nected with Christ's work, and where the largest num- 
ber of souls have been born into His kingdom, will 
most attract the gaze of the heavenly inhabitants. 

Of course Bethlehem, where Christ was born, as 
this pleasant Christmas-tide reminds us, can never 
be forgotten. All the work of salvation, here and 
throughout the world, comes within the mission of 
Christ. His cross makes our entire globe sacred, and 
embalms it forevermore. No angel or archangel can 
be indifferent to a world on which He lived and 
taught, and where He laid down His life that an 
estranged race might be redeemed. The stars, which 
are the churches, may shine in their streng-th ; but He 
will walk in the midst of them. He will hold them in 
His right hand. He is the Head of the Church uni- 
versal, of that one great Zion which includes all lesser 
Zions. Unto the gates of this common Zion new- 
born souls are continually pressing. The north gives 
up, the south keeps not back ; the sons come from 
far, and her daughters from the ends of the earth. 
The tents of Kedar, the desert lands, and the islands 
are looking unto her, whence the perfection of beauty 
shone. These gatherings into the family of God 
will never be forgotten. When the spirits of just 
men have ceased to ask about great empires and 



120 SERMONS. 

famous battles, they will wish to know the histories of 
their glorified companions, — of this man, who was 
born of God in China ; of that man, who was born 
of God in Madagascar ; of one, and another, and an- 
other, more than we can count, of whom it shall be 
said that they were born in Zion i some on the sea, 
and some on the land ; some in the forests, and some 
in the cities ; some in that pagan country, and some 
in this centre of Christian light. They were all born, 
not of flesh and blood, nor of the will of man, but of 
God ; and they will keep fresh throughout eternal 
ages the names of the places where their new life 
began. The name of Philippi will be kept fresh by 
the jailer who there believed on the Lord Jesus 
Christ. Athens will be remembered for the sake of 
Dionysius and the woman named Damaris. There 
are long lists of names, both in the Old Testament 
and the New, which we are apt to " skip " in our read- 
ing of the Bible. They are hard to pronounce, and 
without meaning in our ears. But those names belong 
to God's saints. They are precious in His eyes, and 
He has graven them on the palms of His hands. It 
is well for us that we have them ; for they are a con- 
stant admonition to us of the new light which is to 
break over this world in the far-off future. Our pres- 
ent way of looking at things is to be entirely reversed. 
What we now regard as obscure or unmeaning will 
then shine forth as the sun, and personages and 
events now venerable in our eyes will sink down out 
of sight. It is possible that in heaven we shall hear 
no such names spoken as Alexander, and Caesar, and 
Napoleon ; but we shall there hear such names as Pris- 
cilla, and Junia, and Amplias, and Tryphena, and 
Sosipater, and Stephanas, and Archippus, and Pudens, 



NEW-BORN SOULS. 121 

and Claudia. All those hard names shall grow easy 
and familiar to us in the celestial dialect, as we trace 
them one after another to the redeemed spirits who 
bear them ; as we look back with that blessed multi- 
tude, and realize that our conversion to Christ was 
the one thing which gave our earthly life all its value. 
I love to turn over the pages of church manuals, 
especially those of our own. There whole columns 
of names meet my eye, which have for me almost no 
meaning. But I know that they have a meaning, 
which shall one day oome to me. The stars are in- 
visible to my mortal sight ; but I shall see them, shin- 
ing as the brightness of the firmament, when I have 
entered into the kingdom of my Father. Everything 
else in regard to our beloved Church may be forgotten, 
— all its external history, all its houses of worship, all 
secular events connected with it ; but the long succes- 
sion of redeemed souls, whose names are a blank to 
us, shall keep its memory fresh and immortal. How 
glad the experience, while we are sitting together on 
those heavenly hills, talking over all the way by which 
our Lord led us in this Church, if we shall see a large 
company gathering about us, listening intently, and 
saying, as often as they catch the dear name, " This 
one, and that one, was born in her ; " and so introduc- 
ing themselves to us as our kindred in Christ after an 
especial manner ! 

Now why will we not take up the words of the text 
this morning, and make them the voice of our solemn 
purpose before God? It shall be said of Zion, that 
this and that man was born in her. It may be great 
boldness in me, and it may seem very bold in you, 
dear Christian brethren, thus to resolve with ourselves 
in our hearts. But why fear to have this determina- 



122 SERMONS. 

tion fixed in us, as we look round upon our friends 
wlio yet hesitate ? Is there any one among us whom 
we shall fail to bring into the kingdom, if we earnestly 
set about it in the way God has appointed ? No mat- 
ter who it is, whose name comes into your thoughts in 
this solemn hour, you may have faith in God's prom- 
ise concerning him ; you may dare to affirm that he 
shall be born in this Zion. Parents may dare to say 
it of their children, teachers of their scholars, friend 
of friend, and neighbor of neighbor. Great is the 
power of prayer ; great is the power of Christian ex- 
ample ; great is the power of gentle but persistent en- 
treaty ; and all these are within your power. These 
are the weapons of our warfare, not carnal, but spir- 
itual; and God will make them mighty, while we 
faithfully use them, to the accomplishment of our 
strong desire. 

Dear friends not yet born of the Spirit, you see 
how much the glory of Christ's kingdom depends on 
you. It is you that He came to seek and save. It is 
for your sake that He has set up His throne ; that He 
lived, and died, and rose again ; that He ascended up 
on high, where He intercedes at the right hand of the 
Father. Your individual wills are concerned in that 
which alone is to make our earth memorable. The 
sublime st event which the sun looks on in all his cir- 
cuit is the entrance of a soul into the life which is 
hid with Christ in God. It is the only experience 
possible to you in this world which shall shine more 
brightly upon you the farther you go forward into the 
future ; and when other events and experiences are 
dimmed, and folded up with the forgotten past, this, 
ever revealing to you its deeper depths of joy and 
sweetness, shall be to you the far more exceeding and 



NEW-BORN SOULS. 123 

eternal weight of glory. All that is said and done 
here by the devoted members of this Church, or by its 
pastors one after another, cannot preserve its memory 
if it ceases to be the birthplace of souls. It appeals 
to you to perpetuate its name. By your entrance into 
Christ's service here, but by no other means, can any- 
thing be done which shall cause it to be had in ever- 
lasting remembrance. 

Think of all the thousands whose lives have ended 
during the year now about to close. They were the 
young and the old, the mighty and the weak, the rich 
and the poor, the well known and the unknown, the 
successful and the disappointed. But what are all 
these things to them now, — their ambitions, their 
struggles, their triumphs, their failures, their rivalries, 
their loves and their hates ? So much, and only so 
much to them, is this temporal life and all that per- 
tains to it, as they will be to you far sooner than you 
think, — a dream when one awaketh. Oh that morn- 
ing, that everlasting morning, in which we shall ex- 
change the seeming for the real, the evanescent for the 
eternal ! What is the inheritance to which you shall 
then awake ? Shall you then be startled by the ter- 
rific words, " Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime 
receivedst thy good things," or shall you rise up joy- 
fully to meet your Lord, in the great company of those 
to whom it shall be said, " Come, ye blessed of my 
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you before 
the foundation of the world " ? 



OBEYING THE HEAVENLY VISION. 

Whereupon, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient vmto the heav- 
enly vision. — Acts xxvi. 19. 

St. Paul here declares to us just how it was that 
his wonderful life, as a Christian and a missionary to 
the Gentiles, began : he obeyed the heavenly vision in 
which the will of God concerning him was brought to 
his knowledge. 

What is this heavenly vision ? Are any of us see- 
ing it at the present time ? And if we are, what are 
some of the reasons why we should be obedient to it ? 

To the first of these questions, AVhat is the heavenly 
vision? I answer that it is anything by which God 
calls men to His service in the kingdom of His Son. 
Sometimes the heavenly vision is to those already in 
the Church of Christ, — calling them to some special 
service, such as the ministry, the missionary work, the 
serving of tables, the instruction of the young. " He 
gave some, apostles ; and some, prophets ; and some, 
evangelists ; and some, pastors and teachers." And 
he that ministereth is to wait on His ministry; he 
that teacheth, on His teaching ; he that exhorteth, on 
exhortation ; he that giveth, on His giving ; he tliat 
ruleth, with diligence ; he that showeth mercy, with 
cheerfulness. These various kinds and departments 
of work, to which God calls men in the Church, are 
for the perfecting of the saints, the edifying of the 
body of Christ, till we come unto the measure of the 



OBEYING THE HEAVENLY VISION. 125 

stature of the fullness of Christ. But God calls men 
into His kingdom before assigning them to special 
spheres in it. The heavenly vision is not for believers 
only, it is more especially for unbelievers. St. Paul 
connected all his labors as an apostle back with his 
experience in the road to Damascus. That is the 
experience on which he lays special stress in speaking 
before King Agrippa. The heavenly vision came to 
him while he was a persecutor exceedingly mad against 
the name of Jesus of Nazareth, breathing out threat- 
enings and slaughter after the fleeing Christians. 
There was something peculiar in the form, and in the 
degree of force, with which the Divine will was made 
known to him ; but substantially his experience did 
not differ from that of all men whom God calls by 
His Spirit to repent of their sins and come after 
Christ. No outward miracle or manifestation is es- 
sential to the idea of this heavenly vision. It may 
be wholly inward and spiritual, unnoticed by all save 
those to whom God vouchsafes it. Have you had the 
fact revealed to you that your life does not conform 
to the law of God ? Have you felt uneasy, disturbed, 
restless over the fact that you must meet God after 
death, and give an account of the deeds done in the 
body ? Under the pressure of this guilt and fear, 
have you at times been half persuaded to commit your 
soul to Christ's keeping? Any persons who have thus 
felt, and been thus moved, have had the heavenly 
vision. There are very few in Christian lands who 
have been wholly without it. Some have obeyed it, 
and are now following Christ, in covenant with Him 
and His people ; others have been disobedient to it, 
and stand yet apart, as they did before the vision 
came, from the company of the ransomed. Agrippa 



126 SERMONS. 

had the heavenly vision when he said, " Ahnost thou 
persuadest me to be a Christian." Felix received this 
same vision when he trembled at the preaching of 
Paul, and said, " Go thy way for this time ; when I 
have a convenient season I will call for thee." The 
well-instructed scribe, not far from the kingdom of 
God, saw this vision. It visited the young ruler, and 
he rejected it ; the woman of Samaria, and she em- 
braced it. Yery many persons of whom we read in 
Scripture are mentioned chiefly to notice the fact that 
they received the heavenly vision, and to make them a 
warning or an example to us, according as they heeded 
that vision or were disobedient unto it. 

Seeing, now, what this heavenly vision is, I think 
no one of us can say that we have all our lives long 
been wholly without it. I think we must own, with- 
out exception, that it has come to us many times ; that 
it has hovered before us from the time to which our 
memory goes back, — now obscured by devotion to 
eartlily affairs, now revealing itself more vividly as 
our soids have been turned to it in quickened and 
earnest thought. Are there not some here to whom 
that vision is coming to-day ? They are now feeling 
their sinfulness against God, and their need of Christ 
and His salvation. They cannot resist the feeling 
that somehow Jesus of Nazareth is passing by them, 
as He passed by the way in which Bartimaeus was 
sitting. And they feel within them an impulse to cry 
out, even as he cried, saying, " Have mercy on me, 
thou Son of David." They feel the impulse ; that is, 
the heavenly vision: will they yield to that impulse 
and commit their souls to Christ, or will they be dis- 
obedient to it ? As vessels headed toward the harbor 
feel the breeze which comes up from the ocean and 



OBEYING THE HEAVENLY VISION. 127 

fills their sails, so are there those here, I believe, who 
feel the sweet gales of the divine love blowing upon 
them, and who are half persuaded to weigh anchor, 
and enter into the rest and shelter which are offered 
them in Christ Jesus. But will they be wholly per- 
suaded ? Will they obey the heavenly vision, or re- 
sist it ? Will they be Pauls, or Felixes and Agrippas ? 
The vision may never again be so distinct as it now is ; 
the sense of personal unworthiness so full and pene- 
trating, the glory of Christ so bright and ravishing, 
the life of godliness so noble and attractive. You see 
the city of refuge, its shining domes, its strong towers, 
its safe walls with their gates open to receive you : 
will you hasten into it while the impulse is strong 
upon your soul, or wait till the avenger of blood over- 
takes you ? Almost is not wholly. Conviction of sin 
is not faith in Christ. To feel that you ought to re- 
pent is not the same thing as repentance. You may 
hear Christ knock, but that is not opening the door 
and letting Him in. He may be passing by, but that 
does not bring you to His feet. Though He is to be 
found, you will find Him only as you seek Him. He 
is near, but that will not save you if you refuse to call 
upon Him. You have the heavenly vision ; it is on 
the question of your obedience to it that your salva- 
tion turns. You see the feast which is spread for you 
in your Lord's house, but you will never taste its 
blessed viands so long as you only stand at the open 
door wishing you were a partaker, yet refusing to go in. 
We had occasion, several months ago, to see the 
great interest taken by scientific men in the transit of 
the planet Yenus across the sun's disk. The event 
was anticipated for years. Much costly, delicate, and 
complicated apparatus was got ready, with a view to 



128 SERMONS. 

accurate observations and measurements when the 
phenomenon should occur. Expeditions, in charge of 
famous astronomers, were sent with this apparatus to 
remote parts of the world. No precaution was neg- 
lected, in the hope of gaining, at some one of the 
points visited, such data as might be used to solve 
important problems respecting the earth and sun, and 
their relations to each other. Now Christ comes be- 
tween the human soul and God, as the planet Yenus 
came between the earth and the sun. He is the lus- 
trous gem of our evening twilight. He our bright and 
morning star. We see Him every day, as we may see 
the beautiful planet often ; but only now and then, in 
rare and precious moments, does He come between us 
and God so as to constitute the heavenly vision. Or- 
dinarily our relations to God are not revealed to us in 
any striking and convincing way. We listen to the 
truth, we read the words of Christ, we meditate re- 
specting our duty, in a certain half attentive way, 
much as we cast a casual glance daily at the span- 
gled firmament. These common views of Christ 
come and go, and leave but little impression behind 
them. Only once in a great while is the feeling 
of what we owe to God borne in upon our souls. 
Then is the real transit-hour. Then it becomes us to 
be ready, with all our powers and faculties, to heed 
each slightest intimation ; to obey the impulse of the 
Holy Spirit before He passes by us, and leaves us 
still in our worldliness and sins. Who can tell what 
the fate of the mailed warrior Saul would have been 
if he had not obeyed the voice which spoke to him in 
the very moment of the heavenly vision? It would 
almost seem that he had his own wondrous escape in 
view when he said, " It is impossible for those who 



OBEYING THE HEAVENLY VISION. 129 

were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly 
gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and 
have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of 
the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew 
them again nnto repentance; seeing they crucify to 
themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an 
open shame." God was revealed to Judas in Christ 
Jesus ; but he, refusing to obey the heavenly vision, 
went back into darkness, and became "the son of 
perdition." He, too, might have won the crown of 
righteousness which fadeth not away, if he had bowed 
to the vision of God in Christ, saying, with the peni- 
tent near Damascus, " Lord, what wilt thou have me 
do ? " Jerusalem was destroyed because she knew not 
the time of her visitation. " Oh that thou hadst 
known, even thou, in this thy day ! " is the compas- 
sionate cry which her rejected King lifts over her. 
The heavenly vision may come too late to be of any 
avail if it be slighted. Esau comprehended the value 
of his birthright when he had lost it. Judas saw 
Christ after the betrayal as he had not seen Him 
before ; and the consciousness of what he had wickedly 
lost drove him to desperation. "Behold the bride- 
groom Cometh," was the voice heard at midnight ; but 
it was too late for the foolish virgins. The great 
opportunity had been theirs, and they had slighted it. 
It went from them, never to return, while they slum- 
bered and slept. " As thy servant was busy here and 
there, he was gone." You have your chance, that is, 
to obey the voice in which God calls you ; but if you 
refuse to hearken, that chance is taken away. All our 
common experience is according to this truth. That 
the heavenly vision leaves us worse off than it found 
us, if we refuse to obey it, is a law of life embodied 
in those oft-quoted words, — 



130 SERMONS. 

" There is a tide in the afEairs of men 
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries- ' ' 

What a dreadful moment it was for Judas Iscariot 
wlien lie went unto the enemies of Christ, overwhelmed 
with feelings of guilt, exclaiming, " I have sinned in 
that I have betrayed innocent blood," and hearing 
from them only the cold reply, " What is that to us ? 
see thou to that." Oh, how inexorable sin is ! How 
the tempter turns upon the poor soul which has yielded 
to his temptations, seeming to take a fiendish delight 
in its exquisite tortures ! I do not mean to intimate 
that God calls but once, with His special call of mercy, 
to each erring soul ; nor that He may be now calling 
for the last time to any of us. Yery likely we have 
heard that call repeatedly. Possibly those who hear 
it to-day may hear it again. But how unwise .to pre- 
sume ! We cannot predict the action of God's Spirit, 
as we can the conjunctions of the heavenly bodies. It 
bloweth where it listeth ; and one of the strongest 
reasons why you should listen to it, while hearing the 
sound thereof, is the fact that you cannot tell whence 
it Cometh, nor whither it goeth. Over against the 
comforting truth that God is merciful and long-suffer- 
ing, there is another truth which we do well to con- 
sider. The Scriptures clearly teach that there is a 
limit to the manifestations of His saving mercy. 
There is a time, though we know not when, at which 
the harvest is past, and the summer ended. The 
length of our day of grace is not revealed to us ; but 
" the night cometh," said our Saviour, " in which no 
man can work." The door stands open, and no man 
can shut it ; yet the hour cometh when it shall be shut 



OBEYING THE HEAVENLY VISION, 131 

and no man can open it. We are in the way with our 
adversary, and that way may be long ; yet it has an 
end sooner or later, nor is there hope for us any more 
when once we have been cast into prison. When we 
consider the destinies of the soul, and how its endless 
future is to be shaped by its own action, either bring- 
ing it into peace with God or shutting it away from 
His presence, this thought of a limit to our probation 
gathers tremendous force ; we tremble at the bare 
possibility that an hour should come, though it may 
be very far off, when God will withdraw from us, — 
when He will shut up the window in heaven from 
which His face now shines in love on the unwilling 
soul, and speak those awful words : " Because I have 
called, ye refused ; I have stretched out my hand and 
no man regarded, but ye have set at nought all my 
counsel, and would none of my reproof : I also will 
laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear 
Cometh." 

If there be any here whose minds have been im- 
pressed, or whom God is calling to forsake their sins 
and come after Christ, do they consider that this may 
be the turning-point in their lives, — the crisis of their 
whole spiritual history, either for good or evil ? They 
are like the children of Israel at Kadesh-Barnea, to 
whom the spies brought back a report from the Land 
of Promise. You remember their action, and what 
came of it. They were on the southern border of 
Canaan. Egypt, Pharaoh, the Ked Sea, the wilder- 
ness, Sinai, lay far behind them. In a space of time 
supposed to be about two years they had traversed 
the desert, and were now in sight of their inheritance. 
The twelve chosen men, sent to search out the land, 
returned to them while they waited here, bringing 



132 SERMONS. 

back the report that Canaan was a goodly land, and 
showing the cluster of grapes from Eshcol as a proof 
of its fruitfulness. Only a single prompt and cour- 
ageous movement from the whole host was needed to 
put them in possession of the country to which they 
had come. But they hesitated, and their courage 
failed them. They turned back into the wilderness. 
And, of all the thousands who that day refused to 
grasp the prize which lay within their reach, not one 
ever again came within sight of it. They perished to 
a man, all who had murmured against the Lord and 
Moses during the forty years of desert wanderings. 
Now, that we are to apply to ourselves, in a spiritual 
sense, this chapter of Jewish history, is clear from the 
use made of it in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Christ 
Jesus, the Redeemer of the world, brought near to us 
by the influences of the Holy Spirit, is the Canaan to 
whose borders we are come. Shall we enter into our 
rest while it is called to-day, or shall we fall through 
the same example of unbelief? How soon the heav- 
enly vision, now clear to our minds, will grow dim and 
fade away, if we go back from it into our life of world- 
liness and sin ! 

What reason have we to believe that God will be 
better to us than He was to Israel of old ? If they 
were left to eat the fruit of their doings, why should 
not we be filled with our own devices ? He sware unto 
them that they should not enter into His rest; and 
what right have we to hope that He will again bring us 
near to His salvation, if we count the blood of the cove- 
nant an unholy thing, and do despite to the Spirit of 
Grace ? " If the word spoken by angels was steadfast, 
and every transgression and disobedience received a 
just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if 



OBEYING THE HEAVENLY VISION. 133 

we neglect so great salvation ? " Having come near 
to Christ, and been almost persuaded to believe on 
Him, if you now hesitate, dear friend, will not the 
pillar of cloud remove, and stand behind you, in token 
of a sorer displeasure than overtook Israel? Who 
can tell what long years of forgetfulness of God are 
before you, if you now refuse to take the decisive step 
toward Him ? What wanderings into doubt, unbe- 
lief, sin, hatred of the gospel, neglect and contempt 
of the means of grace, till at last you shall end a rest- 
less and unlovely life, without God and without hope 
in the world ! You may even now be turning back 
toward all this sin and woe, if you refuse the voice 
which speaks unto you from heaven ! 

It may be, dear friend, that you hesitate to obey the 
heavenly vision which God is now vouchsafing you, 
fearing lest you should find yourself alone, and with- 
out human sympathy, in it. Even if you should be 
alone, not another soul in all the world ready to come 
with you after Christ, your duty is the same. Saul 
of Tarsus was thus alone when he saw and heard, and 
nobly obeyed. But the strong probability is that you 
would not find yourself alone ; and this is another 
reason why you should be obedient to the vision. In 
religion, as in a great many other matters of common 
concern, mankind move together in masses. Waves 
of secular excitement, now on this and now on that 
subject, sweep over nations and over the world. Ex- 
tended religious awakenings are natural. They come 
about in conformity to this social law to which all men 
are subject. Therefore, when you find your own mind 
deeply moved or interested on the question of reli- 
gious duty, you may take it for granted that others 
about you are moved in like manner. The heavenly 



134 SERMONS. 

vision is not for you alone, but for many. They are 
hesitating, as you are tempted to hesitate ; and your 
obedience may be the needed power which shall bring 
them, together with yourself, over to the Lord's side. 
Christ rebuked the Jews, saying that they did not 
enter into His kingdom themselves, and hindered those 
who would enter. How do you know that that rebuke 
is not applicable to you ? Very likely there are other 
souls standing just where you stand, who would go in 
if they should see you go, and who hesitate because 
they see you hesitating. This is the social law ; and 
the responsibility which it implies is something fear- 
ful in the case of an awakened soul. Think of this, 
parents, whose children wait to see how you propose 
to act in this matter of religious duty. Think of it, 
wife, husband, young man, young woman, neighbor, 
friend, employer ; remember, when God calls you to 
come after Him, how many others are watching, ready 
to do as they see you do in this whole great concern. 
Thus it is that God has made us one another's keepers. 
No man of us liveth to himself. We live to those about 
us, who are one with us in the mystic bond of kindred 
and sympathy. If we abuse this power, we know not 
whose blood may cry out against us ; if we improve 
it, following the voice which calls us, we shall not 
enter alone into glory, but bringing many sons with 
us. When Joshua asked all the people to choose 
between God and Baal, he first assured them, before 
they had time to choose, that as for himself and his 
house they would serve the Lord ; and instantly all 
the people, bowing to the same impulse which he had 
thus openly obeyed, exclaimed, " God forbid that we 
should forsake the Lord ; we will serve the Lord, for 
He is our God." Let that great example teach you 



OBEYING THE HEAVENLY VISION. 135 

tliat any impulse toward Christ which you may feel 
in your soul is a talent entrusted to your keeping. 
Others stand ready to follow you, as they see you fol- 
lowing Christ. Hinder them not by burying or hid- 
ing your Lord's money, but make the five talents other 
five, the two talents other two, by so acting that what 
you do shall help others into the kingdom. 

But if this obligation be upon those whom the 
Spirit is now turning toward Christ, how solemn the 
responsibility of His professed and recognized follow- 
ers ! Dear Christian friends, we who hope to sit to- 
gether with Christ at His own table in the kingdom 
of His Father and our Father, are we olpeying the 
heavenly vision? Our divine Master has told us that 
we are the light of the world, and has commanded us 
to let our light so shine that others, seeing our good 
works, shall glorify our Father in heaven. St. Paul 
was obedient, not merely in the way to Damascus, but 
ever after, in all his arduous ministry and apostleship, 
till he had finished his course. No one could look on 
him and say that he was careful and troubled about 
the things of this world, or that he sought for any- 
thing, even in his religious zeal, save the glory of 
Christ and the salvation of men. Are these sublime 
objects the paramount motive by which we are in- 
spired? Is this the' blessed sentence which all are 
forced to pass upon us who behold our daily lives ? 
Let us consider, as we look back through the months, 
how much time, prayer, and effort we have given to 
this great work, which is the special work Christ has 
called us to perform. Alas for us, if neglecting this, 
we have been chiefly concerned with matters which 
turn away the mind from Christ and His salvation, 
and which make His glorious name repulsive, rather 



136 SERMONS. 

than beautiful and winning, to those about us ! We 
are not in a fit frame of mind to consider any interest 
of the Church, save as our souls are bent with all 
their energies toward those great and sacred objects 
for which Christ came into our world. Let us, there- 
fore, compel everything else to take the secondary and 
subordinate place. Let us force every question to 
wait for its proper answer, till we are sure that we 
have the mind and will of Christ. Being full of His 
Spirit, seeking supremely, and with one heart, the 
gathering into His kingdom of the souls for which He 
died, we shall easily adopt those forms and methods 
which are best suited to our holy purpose ; and our 
friends and kindred about us, seeing that we are 
devoted to the heavenly vision more than to any or all 
things else, will, through the blessing of God upon 
our faithfulness, be persuaded to be obedient to it 
also. 



HOLY MEN THE WORLD'S GREAT HOPE. 

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is 
perfect. — Matt. v. 48. 

Christ has to do with men themselves rather than 
with something which merely pertains to them. He 
could say, as every one who has caught His spirit can 
say, " I seek not yours, but you." No doubt He con- 
templated, more joyously than any of us ever has, the 
prophetic vision of a perfect world. But the prime 
object which He sought, and which He has bid us 
who succeed Him in His kingdom seek, is perfect men 
and women : by the perfecting of them is the perfect 
world to come. 

The text gives us, in a hortatory form, the main 
theme of the Sermon on the Mount, in which it occurs. 
If you study the beatitudes at the opening of that ser- 
mon, you will find that the blessings there promised 
are for the morally perfect, — the pure-hearted, the 
righteous, the peacemakers, the merciful, the lowly in 
spirit. That standard of a perfect outward life, which 
the old law set up, Christ here takes and applies to 
the whole inward life of men. Outward forms of 
prayer, and of fasting, and of almsgiving are not 
enough. The spirit out of which these naturally come 
is what Christ requires. It is the adultery of the 
heart which He denounces, and He admonishes us that 
if we hate our brother we are murderers. We are 
not to give in the hope of receiving some return : that 



138 ' SERMONS. 

is only lending, as sinners may lend to sinners. We 
are to do good hoping for nothing. We are to love 
our enemies. We are to pray for them which de- 
spite'fully use us and persecute us. We are to be like 
God's rain and sunshine, which He sends upon the 
evil and the good, upon the just and the unjust. 
What Christ sought in those who heard Him there, 
what He still seeks in His followers and in all man- 
kind, is that we may be perfect, as our Father in 
haaven is perfect. The whole aim of the gospel is 
better men and better women ; men and women all 
the time becoming more like God, morally and spirit- 
ually better in each generation, till there shall be a 
new heaven and a new earth. 

Let us see now, dear friends, what Christ and His 
gospel, and all His true followers, have to say to the 
various classes of persons who are dreaming about 
perfection of one kind or another in the world. 

1. Take first the man who is dreaming of a perfect 
system of human philosophy. There are many such 
men, hardly any two of whom entirely agree. Yet 
each one believes tliat a body of thought which shall 
include all truth is attainable. They have been at 
work now several thousand years, and seem to be quite 
as much at variance as ever. Nay, it is no uncommon 
thing for a single great thinker to change his theories 
of man and nature, and of their origin and destiny, 
again and again in the course of a long life of study 
and investigation. Now the gospel comes to one of 
these men, and says to him, " What are you trying to 
do ? " He replies, " I am trying to frame a perfect 
philosophy. My object is, to account for the existence 
of the world, or at least for the changes through 
which it has come to its present state ; to explain the 



HOLY MEN THE WORLD'S GREAT HOPE. 139 

various forms of life which we see about us ; to find 
the law w4iich regulates the earth and everything per- 
taining to it in their onward progress ; to show what 
mind and thought are, and what conscience is ; to 
account for man's dread of death and hope of immor- 
tality ; to tell what the future of our planet is to be, 
and how men may most rationally spend their pres- 
ent lives." '' But," says the gospel to such an one, 
" these are profound and intricate problems of which 
you speak. What are the instruments with which 
you hope to solve them ? " "I rely upon the powers 
of my own mind," says the philosopher. " Ah, yes," 
says the gospel of Christ to him, " but have you duly 
considered those powers ? You will confess that they 
are limited and imperfect, as all true philosophers do. 
They have often misled you. You dare not trust 
them. When you have thought out any great subject, 
you go over your thinking again and again ; and then 
you call trusted friends to your aid, in the hope that 
all errors may be eliminated. Then you publish your 
work ; and if it be not immediately condemned and 
thrown aside, even if it is much admired at first, 
human speculation outgrows it in a few years, and 
some one else's theory, transitory like yours, takes its 
place. And what does all this teach you ? Why, it 
teaches you that you must have perfect men to do the 
thinking before you can have a perfect philosophy. 
Now just here is my mission in the world. I have 
set up a kingdom, and committed it to my followers, 
the whole aim of which is to make better men and 
women. It is the office of ChrivStianity to improve 
the instruments with which philosophy must do its 
work. You must be lifted up out of yourself ; you 
must be drawn into union with God, partake of His 



140 SERMONS. 

nature, and become perfect as He is perfect, or you 
cannot work out a system of thought which shall con- 
tain no error, but only truth. All progress, in any 
sphere of discovery, is dependent on better instru- 
ments. John Locke and Immanuel Kant, who are 
still the two great leaders of human speculation, bent 
their whole energy to this one point. They sought to 
give philosophy an instrument which should lead it 
into the truth only. But they both failed. For they 
did not enough consider the need which the mind it- 
seK, the soul, the spirit of man, has to be made bet- 
ter." Thus does the gospel speak, dear friends ; and 
it applies itself to just the work which other sj^stems 
so strangely neglect. It says : " Let your dream of a 
perfect philosophy go, and first seek to become your- 
self perfect. Your thinking must ever partake of the 
imperfection which is in you. Therefore seek the 
kingdom of God ; for God must dwell in you, and you 
in Him, before you can solve the mystery of this uni- 
verse which He has made." 

2. Again, the gospel comes to the statesman, to 
him who would frame a perfect government in the 
earth, and uses similar words. How many statesmen, 
alas, have mocked at Christ ! Some, who have stood 
highest in the councils of nations, who have cast down 
old governments and set up new ones, have frankly 
owned that the whole subject of religion was one 
which did not interest them. Nor did they care 
whether or not the minds of the people, for whom 
they were making constitutions and laws, were inter- 
ested in Christ and His salvation. Such men have 
often been prodigious workers, endowed with large 
intellect, and wdthal of pure and upright intent. But 
the perfect government has not come, — the govern- 



HOLY MEN THE WORLD'S GREAT HOPE. 141 

ment which stands sure, and which does the work for 
which it was designed. Where is the fault? Cer- 
tainly not always in the theory. That may be well 
enouofh, but it fails in the hands of those who are to 
administer and sustain it. However right or strong 
in itself, it is made weak by the imperfections and 
the sinfulness of men. This is why governments fail ; 
not because they are empires, or monarchies, or aris- 
tocracies, or republics, but because they must be car- 
ried on by selfish and wicked men. Let all that self- 
ishness and wickedness be wholly done away, and let 
men be perfected in their moral and spiritual nature, 
and the statesman's dream would come true. How 
insane, then, the opposition of rulers and lawgivers to 
Christ ! He comes to do just that on which the suc- 
cess of their work, so far as they are upright in pur- 
pose, depends. Surely, if an undevout astronomer is 
mad, twice mad is the statesman who scorns Christ, or 
who does not toil and pray for the triumph of His king- 
dom. Christ says in effect: No matter what name you 
call your government by, but take hold with me, and 
to the extent that my work is done shall your highest 
hopes be fulfilled. Have in yourselves the same mind 
which you find in me, — my justice, my love, my ten- 
derness, my pity, my firm hold on God and the eternal 
verities which centre in Him. Have all this, and you 
will be saved from error in building and administer- 
ing the state. You will be perfect, as your Father in 
heaven is, and hence there ^vill be no flaws in the 
work you are doing for your country. And the suc- 
cess of your work does not depend wholly on you, 
but the people also must be made to love justice, 
mercy, and truth, or what you are doing will sooner or 
later fail. — Thus does Christ speak to all patriots, 



142 ^ SERMONS, 

dear friends. He shows them that the salvation from 
sin, which He brings to men, is essential to the suc- 
cess of their work. He concerns himself not at all 
with their theories and devices, their checks and bal- 
ances, and trying to make two wrongs work out right 
by putting them against each other. With all this 
Christ will not meddle, save to show how utterly it 
must fail, if men are not redeemed and lifted up to 
God, and sanctified and blessed by His gospel. And 
whose work is most essential to the state ? Not the 
statesman's certainly, but that which Christ proposes. 
Christ deals directly with men. So far as His work 
is done, the people cease to be criminal, vicious, igno- 
rant, fickle; and they become unselfish, pure, indus- 
trious, law-abiding, thus taking away almost all need 
of the civil power. The ideal government awaits the 
triumph of Christianity in the world. When all men 
truly believe on the Son of God, and are full of His 
Spirit, we shall know what it is for a nation, yes, for 
many nations, to be born in a day. 

3. Again, Christ has a message for all those who 
are busy with social problems, who are trying to work 
out some theory of human society which shall exclude 
all evil. Some of these theories are too grossly im- 
moral to be named. Some of them, which do not go 
so far as to subvert the family, yet deny the rights 
of property, and especially of ownership in the land. 
The relations of capital and labor to each other, hon- 
est money, the right or wrong of what are called 
" strikes," and the whole question of wages, are each 
receiving a great deal of attention. What shall chil- 
dren be taught in the public schools ? Is city life or 
country life most conducive to social purity ? What 
is the influence of model lodging-houses ? How can 



HOLY MEN THE WORLD'S GREAT HOPE. 143 

raw immigrants be most wisely worked into our Amer- 
ican society ? Is it an evil, or is it not, that so many 
live in hotels rather than in private homes ; that there 
is so much foreign travel, and so much going from city 
to city, with no special attachment to any one place, 
throughout our land ? Certainly here are questions 
enough. And there are men endugh at work upon 
them, who hold all shades of view as to what should 
or what should not be done. But to all these Christ 
comes, and He speaks the same word to them as to 
every other. He says : — Stop your theorizing and 
speculating, and concern yourself more directly with 
the men and women about you. Their moral and spir- 
itual elevation is the only thing which can save human 
society. Why do you think to make the stream pure, 
as long as the fountain is corrupt? What barriers 
can you erect which a depraved nature will not break 
through? First cast the salt into the springs of 
human conduct, and then all the waters flowing there- 
from will be healed. When the grace of God is in the 
hearts of all men, and abounds therein, every social 
evil and wrong will be done away. Your vision of a 
perfect state of society is a dream ; and you wake up 
to find that you have only dreamed, as often as there is 
a new outbreak of wicked passions in the community 
about you. But just so far as the people about you 
are delivered from sin, made new creatures, their souls 
redeemed and sanctified, holy in their spirit and life, 
perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect, you need 
have no fear for human society. . It will take care of 
itself. Whatever its external arrangements, justice 
and truth will abound in it, nor shall there be any- 
thing to hurt or destroy in all the holy mountain. 
4. As to these, so to those who are troubled about 



144 SERMONS. 

tlie organization o£ the churcli, Christ comes to turn 
them away from that to His own proper work. Some 
would organize the church with a view to making 
preaching prominent ; others would make a liturgy 
overshadow the preaching. Some would see the 
church wholly controlled by the clergy, others wholly 
by the membership as such. Some would see woman 
take the same share as man in ecclesiastical matters ; 
others would confine her to a special sphere. Some 
would multiply meetings ; others say that already 
there are too many. Some would organize the church 
so that it shall repress feeling, emotion, and enthu- 
siasm ; others would have it stimulate these. Some 
greatly exalt the sacraments, or would have them 
administered only in a particular way ; others would 
subordinate them to the teaching of doctrine and prac- 
tical duties. But Christ comes and says : You can 
never get a perfect church by such means as these. 
Your church will grow better only as you yourselves 
are better, and as you concern yourself for the growth 
of your brethren in holiness. Nor will you ev^r con- 
vert the world by your machinery, but by your direct 
efforts in men's behalf. — How much energy and time 
and money are wasted, dear friends, on these external 
arrangements of the church ! Theory after theory 
of its proper organization is thought out, shown by 
faultless logic to be the best, tried at great cost, and 
then, after a little, is thrown aside for something else. 
" Let all this alone," is the message of the gospel to 
us. " There is but one thing which will unite the 
church, and that is the devotion of all its members 
to the saving of a lost world." Who ever heard of 
divisions among Christians, or of any trouble as to 
how the church shall be constituted, while their eye 



HOLY MEN THE WORLD'S GREAT HOPE. 145 

was single to this great work ? Men make the denom- 
inations, but God makes the church. And we shall 
not co-work with Him in His blessed office till we 
think more of men and less of systems ; till we would 
rather save a soul from death than advance some pet 
theory of ours. Our love for human souls must be 
perfect, like our heavenly Father's. As His rain and 
sunshine come down to bless all alike, so our lives 
must bring spiritual life to the dead in sin. When 
we are thus perfect in our love for lost men, and they 
are made better by our influence upon them, the 
church will be increased and edified. It will take 
that organization which is natural to it in its circum- 
stances ; yet its power in the world will not be due to 
its organization, but to the fact that its members, for- 
getting themselves and all special forms, and heeding 
only what Christ the Lord has said, are everywhere 
pleading with men to believe on Him. In whatever 
sphere, therefore, our lot may be cast, — in that of the 
thinker, in the state, in society, in the care of the 
church, — let us bear in mind that perfection can 
come only as mankind are made perfect in Christ. 

Perhaps you say that this puts all our ideals very 
far off. Not so far off as we may think, dear friends, 
if we will but turn from our devices, and do the work 
Christ gives us with our might. If, as some hold, the 
world is not growing spiritually better, but worse, we 
ought not to wonder. Christ's followers, even those 
who toil and pray for the world's deliverance from sin, 
are doing almost nothing compared with what they 
might do toward that blessed result. They are in- 
venting theories, and laying out their strength on gen- 
eral measures, while they strive not to be perfect them- 
selves before God, and to bring as many souls as they 



146 SERMONS. 

can lay hold of to Christ. If Christ must come again, 
before His work is done in the world, that second com- 
ing must be to call back His people from the many- 
paths into which they have wandered, and to fill them 
with His own great love for men yet in their sins. 
But the Holy Spirit was sent to do that for us, dear 
friends ; and if all Christians were but filled with 
His divine fire, there would soon be a redeemed world 
waiting to receive Christ when He comes back to it. 

What if Christ Himself had been imperfect, or at 
all sinful, dear friends? Could He have done His 
saving work all the same ? Could He have been the 
perfect teacher of religious truth that He was ? Cer- 
tainly not. He was the truth, and therefore He could 
speak the truth. He could give to the world only 
what was in Himself. He could not have given us a 
perfect religion if He had not been Himself perfect. 
And He is our example, our pattern. He encourages 
us to hope that we may reach the measure and stature 
of His fullness. The Spirit of the Lord, dwelling in 
us, can change us into His image. And only as we 
are thus changed from glory to glory can we be safe 
guides to others, and surely build, up His kingdom in 
the world. 

What does the story of Adam, and of the garden 
in which God put him, teach us, if not that where 
men are perfect all things about them will be perfect ? 
Men make their world. So long as they are good, 
the world about them is good ; and when they become 
evil, the world in which they are grows evil. It was 
so at the beginning. The Lord God caused the 
ground to bear briers and thorns after man had 
sinned, though the same ground had borne only what 
was pleasant to the eye and the taste while man was 



HOLY MEN THE WORLD'S GREAT HOPE. 147 

innocent. Yes, what man himself was in his own per- 
son, morally and spiritually before God, such all things 
about him tended to become. 

And is not the same great lesson taught us in the 
descriptions of heaven which we have ? Nothing that 
defileth is there. The lively stones, of which it is 
builded, are the redeemed saints washed and made 
white. Such as they are is the place in which they 
eternally dwell. They, by their pure presence, make 
the city. Though God is the light, and the Lamb the 
glory, yet their righteousness is the clean linen, the 
harvest of holiness in them is the twelve manner of 
fruits, their perfection of soul makes the city four 
square, and their communion is the everlasting song. 

Oh, dear friends, how unspeakably sad that so few 
have learned the great lesson of our text ! Let us 
begin to learn it to-day. May the past suffice for us 
to have laid ourselves out on other things, and hence- 
forth may it be our whole study how we, and all whom 
we can reach, may be made more and more like Christ ! 
The world would not be evil if man were not evil, and 
it will be good only so fast as he becomes good. " Be 
ye perfect " is the one behest which we should shout 
in men's ears unto the ends of the earth. For only 
as those words are obeyed can there be a new heaven 
and a new earth. As you, and I, and one and another 
about us, cease from all other devices, and begin to 
repeat in our lives the loving ministry of our divine 
Master, errors and mistakes will begin to vanish out 
of the church, out of society, out of the state, out of 
systems of human thought, and the morning of the 
day in which the earth shall be full of the knowledge 
and glory of God will begin to dawn. 



CONSCIENCE. 

These, having not the law, are a law unto themselves. — Rom. ii. 14. 

It is weU for the shipmaster, feeling Ms way along 
rocky coasts and amongst shoals and currents, if he 
can always see the heavenly bodies, and have beacons 
and lighthouses to sail by. But when sun and stars 
are shut in, and he is far out from the land, enveloped 
in mists, he thinks of his compass and chart, and runs 
to them for direction. 

And so it is well for us, while navigating the shoaly 
sea of moral and religious opinion, if we can always 
have the right course made unmistakable to us. But 
should all external helps disappear, and we be left, 
amid darkness and perplexities, to find out our course 
as best we may, still we are not in a desperate case. 
We, like the other mariner, have a counselor on board 
to which we may resort ; and when the great light out 
of the heavens has vanished, the lamp from the bin- 
nacle still sends a ray forward into the gloom. 

This lamp, which you carry with you, and which is 
your last resource in perplexed questions of right and 
wrong, has been named Conscience in our every-day 
speech. The apostle refers to this in the words of the 
text. The unchristianized world, whose corruptions 
he has just been portraying, and which make so dark 
a picture, cannot plead total ignorance as an excuse 
for their sins. They have not those external helps 
such as nations blessed with the Scriptures possess, 



CONSCIENCE. 149 

but they have conscience, — an inward monitor, — 
whose suggestions it is safe for them to follow. That 
law which David rejoiced in — which was pure, en- 
lightening his eyes, and by which he was warned 
against sin — had never been revealed to them ; and 
yet, by virtue of certain inherent powers, they had a 
law, — yea, were a law unto themselves. 

Now, if this could be said of an untaught pagan, 
much more can it be said of each one of us. You, 
my hearer, in all questions of duty toward God or 
toward men, are a law unto yourself. There is a 
touchstone in your soul to which you may bring every 
action — or course of action — and be certified of its 
moral character. You have an inherent ability to find 
out, in any given case, what is right for you and what 
is wrong for you. When you do that which God ap- 
proves, and when you do that which He condemns, 
you may know how He views your conduct, not only 
afterwards, but beforehand and in the mean time. 

It is not necessary for me to show here that right 
and wrong are qualities actually residing in human 
conduct. You are aware that some men have denied 
the existence of such a thing as moral character in 
actions. They say that one act appears good and an- 
other bad to us from mere custom or education, and 
not because the two acts are morally different. When 
we make such distinctions as righteous and wicked, 
holy and sinful, virtuous and vicious, well-deserving 
and ill-deserving, we are only expressing certain 
groundless fancies, — there are no realities corre- 
sponding to such ideas. Thus they endeavor to take 
from us the feeling of responsibility, to make it ap- 
pear that our best deeds are only a selfish prudence, 
that the idea of guilt or repentance for any act we 



150 SERMONS. 

commit is a mere spectre, and that our highest wisdom 
consists, not in troubling ourselves about right and 
wrong, but in doing that which shall afford us the 
most pleasure. I need not say that these men are 
philosophers. No other class of persons have ever 
reasoned themselves so far away from what is evi- 
dently true, — being self-evident, — and from that 
which every sound mind instinctively believes. We 
are not cheating ourselves with empty imaginations 
when we say that some deeds are morally good and 
others morally evil, — when our thoughts accuse or else 
excuse one another. That law which the finger of 
God has written on our hearts, and which abides with 
us while we have not the law written on tables of 
stone, — this law is not concerned with the prejudices 
of custom and the creations of a feverish brain, but 
the actions which it approves or condemns have a real 
desert abiding in them, and he who performs them is 
not an object of indifference, but of righteous judg- 
ment, in the sight of God. 

I propose now to consider some of the offices of 
conscience, — some of the workings of this inward 
guide which we have in questions of moral obligation. 
And in doing this I shall not aim to communicate any 
new truths, but shall hope rather to reproduce and 
brighten certain facts of your personal experience. 

(1) The first office of Conscience, which we will 
consider, may be called the perceptive office. 

When you have been reading works of biography 
and history, running over some fictitious narrative, or 
witnessing a scenic performance, various personages 
have been introduced to your notice. You have been 
brought face to face with the unjust judge, the Chris- 
tian patriot, the slippery politician, the benevolent 



CONSCIENCE. 151 

ruler, tlie treacherous friend, the unnatural child, the 
devoted mother, the kind neighbor. Crowded together 
upon the same canvas, and in the utmost disorder, 
you have seen strutting vanity, sweet forgiveness, 
meek-visaged piety, manly self-reliance, the distorted 
face of passion, sordid appetite, stealthy deceit, malice, 
benignit}^ avarice, revenge. As you contemplated 
these diverse qualities and characters, you perceived 
two general types, to one or the other of which they 
could severally be referred. While you were rejoicing 
in the success of one, admiring the splendid abilities 
of another, pitying the imbecility of another, and de- 
spising the meanness of another, you also perceived a 
single line dividing them all into tw^o parties. You 
perceived, besides every other diversity, a moral differ- 
ence : as many of them as were not good were bad, — 
as many of them as were not virtuous were vicious ; as 
many as were not holy were sinful. There was no 
third party, nor an}'" neutral party, according to this 
perception. Many of these characters, which you have 
met with in 3'our reading and intercourse with men, 
return to your thoughts now and then ; and when you 
have forgotten every other of their peculiarities, this 
impression of good or bad still remains. Shylock, 
Portia, — Gabriel, Lucifer, — Napoleon, Washing- 
ton, — Paul, Judas, — Elijah, Ahab, — Herod, Sim- 
eon : though everything else associated with these 
names may have passed out of memory, we yet have 
in each case a general impression of good or ill desert. 
And as in the case of an entire character or life, 
so of any single act. Let a man do what he will in 
your presence, there is an instant voice within you 
which says, '' That act was right," or else, " That 
act was wrong." The judgment pronounced may be 



152 SERMONS. 

erroneous, and you may reverse it afterwards ; it may 
be spoken in so low a tone, and you may be so busy 
with other things, as hardly to have any consciousness 
of it : but it is there in every instance, as you will 
soon be convinced by a little watching of your mind's 
processes. 

So, also, when the question has reference to your own 
line of conduct and is immediate and practical. In 
such a case you perceive which is the praiseworthy 
and which the blameworthy course before you on the 
very instant, and with hardly the possibility of mis- 
take. Let it be a mercantile transaction. " Shall I 
venture upon this matter ? " is the question for you to 
decide. Many particulars enter into the inquiry : 
" Will it be lucrative ? have I enough knowledge of 
business to carry it through ? what would be its effect 
on my social standing ? would it endanger my health ? 
can I attend to it without being separated from my 
family and friends?" These are items over which 
you may be obliged to brood long and earnestly ; re- 
specting some of them you may not be able to come to 
any conclusion ; you must run some risk, acting on 
probabihties, and leaving it for the result to show 
whether you decided prudently or not. But there is 
another question involved, about which you have no 
such hesitation. " Does this, which I am purposing 
to do, arise out of a good or bad motive ? Does it, in 
its spirit and purpose, conform to the law of moral 
rectitude, or does it violate that law ? " You have 
no need to deliberate over this. There is a voice 
within you which speaks instantly and with all author- 
ity : it asks no more light, no more evidence. It dis- 
cerns the moral character of your intention intuitively, 
and its sentence of approval or condemnation is final. 



CONSCIENCE. 163 

You know, beyond the shadow of doubt, whether your 
undertaking is right or wrong, whether the motive 
from which it springs is just or unjust. You have 
heard men pretend to be in doubt as to the moral pro- 
priety of certain business practices ; but how can such 
doubting be indeed honest ? Is it possible that one 
should not know the character of his own motives ? 
Though we may not be able to judge for another man, 
yet we can, I believe, each man for himseK. Where 
one begins to talk of being in the dark as to the moral 
character of his practices, it is a pretty sure sign that 
he knows them to be wrong, and that for some selfish 
reason he wishes to be blinded to their ill-desert. It 
is a willful ignorance, a confusion of ideas which he 
has labored hard to produce ; he has sought to throw 
a web of sophistries over his soul's eye, and to mis- 
understand the still small voice. Many a one has 
amassed wealth by what we charitably call doubtful 
methods ; and at length, after having gained his ob- 
jects, he pretends that this question of right and 
wrong all at once occurs to him. And then, consult- 
ing some distinguished moralist or divine, and getting 
great credit for conscientiousness, he concludes to 
adopt a different course ; and yet the truth is, that he 
knew first, just as really as last, the character of his 
conduct, — only he then had a selfish object to gain. 
Do not carry these difficulties to your friends. They 
cannot settle them for you. You are a law unto your- 
self respecting them. After all your going about, 
and taking advice, and asking how others do, you 
learn only that which your own mind had suggested 
to you long before. 

Now this intuitive perception of the right and the 
wrong, when we are about to take any step, is what 



154 SERMONS. 

we call an act of conscience. In every question of 
morals we have here a judge whicli pronounces sen- 
tence on the instant, which decides infallibly when al- 
lowed to act freely, and to which we are many times 
driven back from every other helper. As it is our 
first and best resort, so it is our last resort. We re- 
turn to it, as persons cured of blindness shut their eyes 
and rely on the old sense of touch to guide them 
through a forest ; we are like the benighted traveler, 
who, despairing of the way homeward, drops the rein 
upon his horse's neck ; like the man of quick nerves, 
whom the face of the sky and the barometer often 
mislead, but whose ebb or flow of animal spirits never 
fails to indicate when calms and tempests are coming. 

(2) A second office of Conscience, which comes 
next in order, may be called the impulsive. 

We have just considered one mental phenomenon : 
we have seen how the mind acts in view of two or 
more possible lines of conduct ; it decides intuitively 
which one of them all is right, — which courses you 
ought to avoid, and which course you may justly pur- 
sue. But when this sentence has been given, there is 
immediately another forth-putting, — another mani- 
festation of mental energy. We are conscious of an 
impulse arising within us, — an impulse toward that 
which is right, and away from that which has been 
pronounced wrong. The voice within us does not stop 
with saying, " This is the way," but it forthwith adds, 
" Walk ye in it." This monitor does everything it can 
do — and not impair our freedom — to help us into 
the paths of righteousness. When it has counseled 
us, it gently urges us to follow that counsel. There 
are other motives, inclining us in other directions, and 
these often win the day against conscience ; but we 



CONSCIENCE. 155 

never act contrary to her suggestions witliout a strug- 
gle. Go back into your experience a little, if you 
doubt the truth of this. When jo\x saw those several 
courses of action before you, and entered on one which 
you knew to be wrong, did you feel no impulse toward 
the course which you knew was right ? When you 
deceived that man, or avoided that obligation, or mag- 
nified that injurious report about your neighbor, or 
indulged that appetite, how was it with you ? Did you 
not struggle against something which was prompting 
you to do otherwise ? Did not thoughts of your early 
home, of your father, of your mother, of brothers and 
sisters, and of your old pastor and Sabbath-school 
teacher, rally to the support of this inward motive ? 
Were you not obliged to smother all such memories, 
and to forget the daylight and the faces of your 
friends, before you could put down the impulse to 
good, and in spite of it take the evil path ? 

When a man first enters upon the road of iniquity, 
there is a fence for him to get over. Satan may have 
built a stile there to facilitate his ruin, and he may 
behold tempting sights, and fair hands may be reached 
forth to help him ; but after all it is a by-path which 
he enters. He has to make some effort to reach it, 
though he may find it easy enough afterwards. Con- 
science not only shows us the wrong way, but she bar- 
ricades it, and forewarns us to keep out of it. 

Nor is this all ; for we at the same time see the 
right way, and that conscience leaves open, and gives 
us an impulse toward it. Some persons try to satisfy 
themselves with a negative goodness ; that is, they sit 
still where these two roads meet, entering neither. 
But you will perceive at once that this does not meet 
the demands of conscience. She requires something 



156 SERMONS. 

positive from us. To perceive our duty is one thing, 
and not to run away from it is another ; and when we 
have done both these, we may not have yielded to the 
impulse of conscience to perform that duty. Until 
you are actually in the way of the right, — putting 
forth positive acts of justice, truth and love, — there 
is no more righteousness in you than there is in blocks 
and stones and the eternal hills. They never do any 
wrong ; no sin of commission is ever laid to their 
charge. They are as guiltless as the angels of God ; 
and you will be as destitute of merit as they, till you 
begin indeed to run in the way of holiness. 

Oh what a friend you have in that bosom monitor ! 
You may be perplexed and bewildered while passion 
rages, — while you consult the rules of expediency, — 
while you make self-interest your adviser. But when 
you drive away these, and sit down tranquilly to ask 
only what is right in the case, you never fail ; and 
then a wall rises up to shut out sin, and the path you 
ought to enter is open and smooth, and you feel, as it 
were, a hand laid on you, gently impelling you to take 
the first happy step. As often as you have stood on 
the narrow istlmius where you have seen the two 
oceans of right and wrong spread out, — one on either 
hand, — you have seen a boat coming up from the 
right, into which you have involuntarily stepped ; and 
a soft impulse has then started you off from the shore. 
If, notwithstanding this, you have chosen evil at last, 
it is because you have rowed back to the land, and 
crossed over to the other sea, contrary to the sweet 
persuasions of the friend in your soul. Conscience 
does all that it can do to save you from sin. Like 
some mother hunting for a lost child, it not only calls 
to you from its far-off home, but comes out after you 



CONSCIENCE. 157 

into the wilderness, marking the trees all along for 
your guidance ; and it arouses you from your stupor, 
and lifts you up, and advances your feet into the home- 
ward way. It is not content with stretching a thread 
through the windings of the labyrinth in which you 
wander, but it puts that thread into your hand and 
winds it about you, and gently draws you on ; so that 
you are guilty of positive resistance if you do not find 
your way out into the air and sunlight. 

(3) Conscience has one other office, namely, the 
retributive. 

This third act is not linked immediately to the sec- 
ond, as we saw that the second was to the first. As 
soon as we have the perception of the right, we feel 
the impulse toward it ; but between this impulse and 
the retributive work, an act of freewill comes in. 
Thus far, the process has been involuntary ; it has 
gone on of itself without our help, and in spite of hin- 
drances. But here it pauses to see how we will 
choose ; after we have decided which course to take, 
and are actually pursuing our chosen way, then the 
final work of conscience begins. 

This retribution may be in the form either of a 
reward or of a punislmient. Recall some moment 
in your history — if you can — when you implicitly 
obeyed conscience. Perhaps you had just come from 
a Christian home to the city, — a young man in quest 
of your fortune. While unpacking your trunk you 
came across the little Bible, — and the note asking 
you, for the sake of a mother's love, to read the vol- 
ume each day prayerfully. You did not feel the mag- 
nitude of the question at first, perhaps ; and carelessly 
laid the holy book aside, or read it now and then in 
an indifferent manner. But gradually temptations 



158 SERMONS. 

rose around you, and you saw that a struggle must 
come. " Shall I waste my Sabbaths, go with vicious 
companions, and form evil habits, or shall I be true 
to my early instructions ? " This was the alternative ; 
and, turning the deaf ear to pleasure, you listened to 
the voice of duty. You took a seat in the house of 
God, you joined the Bible-class, you sought the friend- 
ship of the good. Now what was the result of that 
choice ? Why, a feeling of self-respect rose at once 
within you. You were at peace with yourself, — calm 
and happy in soul. You did not fear to look any 
man in the face ; frowns could not abash you, disap- 
pointments could not drive you to desperation. If 
you have steadily pursued this course, — shunning the 
evil and choosing the good, — your reward has been 
constant and increasing. No crimes, no dissipations, 
no dishonesties lift up their black fronts as you gaze 
into the past : everything is bright, fair, and of good 
report ; and therefore the retributive work of con- 
science is an unspeakable delight to you. You have 
a blessedness which no external success could give, 
and which no worldly trouble can ever disturb. All 
things in nature and providence smile upon you. 
They say, " He is innocent ; let him pass unscathed ; 
protect him from harm ; God loves him, and bids us 
strew flowers in his path." 

But suppose that you chose the other side of the 
alternative, — that you resisted the impulse of con- 
science, and chose the evil way. Then the retribution 
was not pleasant, but terrible to you. The very first 
step you took, a viper stung you ; your choice re- 
bounded with a painful blow ; no sooner had you 
opened the gate than the flames of punishment burst 
forth upon you. If you forgot the counsels of Chris- 



CONSCIENCE. 159 

tian parents ; if you broke from the restraints of your 
early home ; if you turned away your foot from the 
sanctuary ; if you have indulged appetite ; if you have 
followed passion, and yielded to temptations ; if you 
have wronged your fellow-man, or been a defamer or 
a busybody, — you have suffered more or less all the 
while. It has been a perpetual dropping, a lingering 
torture, a wave of discomfort which may have ebbed 
at times, but which has never rested. Your worldly 
successes have perhaps elated you for a brief period ; 
but your joy was like the crackling of thorns, which 
flame a moment and then turn to ashes. Some great 
honor or victory has lit up the troubled waters for 
a day ; but they have still been troubled, and have 
cast forth mire and dirt. You have had a little of 
that feeling which oppressed Cain's heart when he 
went out from the Lord's presence with a mark upon 
him. You carry a restless, untamed secret within you. 
It is closely caged, but you constantly tremble lest it 
should slip the bolt, or find an unfastened window 
and fly out before the whole community. This is your 
retribution ; this is the final work of conscience in the 
wrong-doer's heart. It may vary in intensity under 
different circumstances and at different periods of 
life, but it is inevitable. Can you prove that it will 
not be cumulative and eternal ? 

O sinner. Conscience is the sworn enemy of your 
happiness ! She is the Nemesis of the ancients, dog- 
ging the footsteps of the criminal, and ever brandish- 
ing her sword and scorpion-whip above him. She tells 
Ms secret to the stars, to the winds, to the birds, to 
the flowers. There is nothing in all the earth, nor in 
heaven above, nor in the depths beneath, which she 
does not press into her service. The planets in their 



160 SERMONS. 

courses fight with her against the fleeing transgressor. 
The sun and moon stand still that she may complete 
his overthrow. The silence and the darkness and the 
moan of the ocean terrify him. The voice of blood 
crieth out from the ground. " I am a sinner," is the 
inward conviction ; and the mountains echo it ; the 
sunbeams paint it ; the very leaves whisper back the 
voice, " Thou art a sinner." " Guilty " is the word ; 
and it is taken up and passed round the universe till 
everything learns it; and you seem at length to be 
suspended at the centre of a vast sphere, hollow to 
its surface, and all over that surrounding concave you 
see eyes flashing with indignation, and hear millions 
of voices from all points, hissing the fearful word 
"guilty." 

We have now analyzed that process which takes 
place in man as often as any question of duty comes 
before him. Our mental history has been spread out 
around us like a broad sea, and we have looked forth 
on the surface, witnessing the calms and tide -cur- 
rents, the lights and shadows and storms, which play 
over it. 

This looking into our experience has shown us, that 
in all questions involving the idea of right and wrong, 
we do at once perceive on which side each of these 
two moral qualities lies ; that immediately after this 
perception we feel an impulse, equivalent to a com- 
mand, urging us to pursue the right and avoid the 
wrong; and that we are rewarded with peace of 
mind, or punished with remorse, according as we 
obey or disobey that mandatory voice. If we choose 
the right, our retribution is blessed ; but if we choose 
the wrong, our retribution is terrible. 

We have seen enough to feel the force of the 



CONSCIENCE. 161 

apostle's words. Let this truth take up its abode in 
your thoughts, my hearer, the fact that you are a law 
unto yourself. When you flee from the Bible, from 
the sanctuary, from all places of Christian influence, 
you do not get away from this tribunal in your soul. 
" The mind is its own place, and can make a heaven 
of hell, a hell of heaven." In the midst of your 
banquetings and revelries, a hand often comes out, 
and on the wall over against you writes your con- 
demnation in letters of fire. You go forth from the 
presence of God and His people ; but the mark set on 
you seems to be burning into the living flesh, and 
everywhere betraying you. When the rush of excite- 
ment is over, honest reflection ensues ; and you throw 
dov/n the thirty pieces of silver, and sigh for annihila- 
tion. You walk in your pleasure-bower in the cool of 
the day ; but suddenly a voice saith, " Where art thou, 
sinner ; " and you are afraid, and hide yourself. It is 
in vain that you silence all the tongues of reproof ; 
for when you have created this silence, the rebukes of 
the inward monitor become only the more articulate 
and audible. Your very heart-throbs are startling to 
you. Your sin rises up out of its bloody grave, and 
steals along after you, whispering its ghostly threats 
just over your shoulder. 

There is no peace for you till the decisions of this 
inward tribunal have been turned in your favor. 
Some power must be applied to your conscience which 
shall cleanse it from these death-dealing remembrances. 
If there be any Sa\dour to whom you may transfer 
your sins, and any Holy Spirit who is able to renew 
your heart, they are your only hope ; they are the city 
of refuge into which you may run and be safe from 
the avenger. 



THE BEGINNING AND END OF SIN. 

But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, 
and enticed. Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin ; 
and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. — James i. 14, 15. 

Much has of late been said about the punisliment 
of sin. It is to be hoped that our anxiety about the 
punishment will not lead us to overlook the sin. The 
consequences of sin, however dreadful they may be, 
are not so much to be dreaded as sin itself. If we 
could but take care of the causes, the effects would 
take care of themselves. I am sure, dear friends, 
that if we had any true sense of what sin is at the 
present moment doing in our world, any picture of a 
retribution to come would seem comparatively tame 
to us. 

The word " sin " is a religious word ; a word, that 
is, which belongs rather to our religious than to our 
secular phraseology. It suggests the idea of divine 
rather than human obligation. Sin is transgression 
of the law of God, or want of conformity thereto. 
We may consider all wrong-doing as of three special 
kinds, according to the three chief relations in which 
every person stands. A man is related first to him- 
self, and his wrong-doing in this relation is commonly 
known as his vice. But secondly a man is related to 
his fellow-men, and his wrong-doing in this relation is 
his crime. Again, every man is related to God, and 
in this relation his wrong-doing is his sin. Vice, 



THE BEGINNING AND END OF SIN. 163 

crime, sin, — these are the three ideas, each distinct 
and standing by itself in our thought, though they run 
into one another more or less in practice. We can 
conceive of a man as very vicious in life without being 
criminal ; that is, he breaks no positive law of the 
state. Or a man may be a great criminal, that is, a 
high-handed violator of public law, while he is unob- 
jectionable in his private life. Jefferson Davis taught 
a Bible class during the war of the Rebellion, and was 
in church when he heard of the surrender of Lee. 
But though there may be crime without vice, and vice 
without crime, yet neither of these can exist without 
sin. The divine relation goes around those which are 
human. It includes them, and goes out far beyond 
them. If one is vicious, he sins, and if one is crim- 
inal, he sins ; yet one may sin who is neither vicious 
nor criminal. It is as though there were three circles 
having a common centre. The largest of the three 
includes the other two, and also has a belt of space 
which is outside of them both. Paint the inner cir- 
cles white or black, and the outer circle is affected to 
that extent ; yet if you paint only the belt which lies 
around them in the great circle, they are untouched. 
Thus it is that you cannot have either vice or crime 
without having sin ; yet there may be a broad belt of 
sin running around the soul between its orbit and 
God, where there is no vice nor crime. The lower 
relations to ourselves and our fellow-men do not in- 
clude the higher, but the higher include the lower. 
All our wrong-doing is therefore sinful, and hence sin 
is the one comprehensive idea which includes all moral 
evil. Do away with sin, and you not only do away 
with vice and crime, but you fill out the whole vast 
circle of duty and right from centre to circumference. 



164 SERMONS. 

Every interest of man and of this temporal life is 
secured to the extent that God is obeyed. Sin is 
therefore the heart and centre of every form of wicked- 
ness or corruption which confronts us in the world. 
To explain the origin of this is to account for the ex- 
istence of all moral evil ; to do what we can for the 
removal of sin from among men, is to do what we can 
for the final reign of righteousness in the earth. 

The existence of sin is a mystery which cannot be 
satisfactorily accounted for ; yet the following things 
we may affirm out of the Bible and on grounds of 
reason : — 

1. First, that God made sin possible. He made it 
possible by creating man. If He had stopped in the 
work of creation before coming to man. He might 
have had a world here in which there would have been 
no sin. There would have been birds of the air and 
creeping things and fishes in the sea, but no sin. The 
sun might have risen and set upon glorious continents, 
covered with vast forests full of animal life, but in 
all his circuit he would not have looked on sin. The 
rank vegetation of the tropics may exhale poisonous 
odors, but it cannot sin. The monsters of the deep 
can make war on each other, and lions growl and 
fight, but they cannot sin. All these are without con- 
science, without spiritual nature, without that imme- 
diate relation to God which makes sin possible. This 
all came to pass only when God said, " Let us make 
man." What a moment that was in God's creative 
work ! He foresaw all the sin which would flow out 
from man over his new world. Yet He did not hes- 
itate. There is no break in the process. Not only 
does He make man in His own image, but He declares 
that He made all other creatures for the sake of man. 



THE BEGINNING AND END OF SIN. 165 

He puts man over them all as their appointed lord, 
crowns him with glory and honor on that throne of 
dominion, and there ceases from His work as though 
His creative power had reached its climax in man. 
He called His other works good, but man He called 
very good ; and the morning stars sang together, and 
the sons of God shouted for joy over his work thus 
completed and crowned. Dear friends, why all this 
joy over the creation of man, with whom came the 
possibility of sin ? Ah, it is because that with the 
possibility of sin came the possibility of holiness ! 
Whether this answer to the question satisfies us or 
not, it is all that either reason or Scripture gives. He 
alone can do right who has power to do wrong. You 
cannot have any moral character if you are not free. 
Only those who can be bad are able to be good. A 
well-deserving life springs out of the same indepen- 
dent manhood in virtue of which one may make his 
life ill-deserving. You could not live worthily if you 
were not able to live unworthily before men and God. 
In order that God might have a creature in His uni- 
verse who could be holy. He must make one who could 
be sinful. The lower orders of life were not made in 
His image. They are not His children as man is. 
We do not read that He breathed His own breath 
into them, and they became living souls. If they 
could not sin, neither could they be holy. Their life 
is not free, but is regulated by natural laws. If they 
are without blame when they kill their prey, so are 
they without merit when they feed and guard their 
young. They have no moral nature. Sin and holi- 
ness are alike impossible to them. But with man, in 
whom is the possibility of sin, the capacity for holi- 
ness also comes. If God looked forward through 



166 SERMONS. 

human history, and saw all the Pharaohs and Jero- 
boams and Neros who would arise out of that free-will 
with which He endowed man, He also saw the Enochs 
and Samuels and Johns and Pauls. Nay, He saw 
that bright consummate flower of our race, and of 
all history, Jesus of Nazareth. That He might be 
brought forth into the world, and dwell among men 
full of grace and truth, there is no possibility of evil 
for which we should not gladly make way. Though 
our souls are full of pain at what we see of the do- 
ings of sin in the earth, yet we thank God for it when 
we learn that it could not be but for that image of 
God in men which has given us the one true and 
great Light of the world. You send your son to col- 
lege ; but his education will only make him stronger 
to do evil, if he is not inclined to do good. Yet you 
send him, and wisely send him, notwithstanding the 
hazard. Or you endow your child with your worldly 
wealth, as the father in the parable did his two sons. 
You do this, and what you do must be judged by it- 
self, though you make it possible for your child to be 
a prodigal. The illustration is not perfect, I know, 
since God can foresee as we cannot ; yet it touches at 
one point. There are certain things which you are in 
fatherly kindness bound to do for your son, though 
you may foresee that he will abuse the love, and not 
be made better by it but worse. God must have fore- 
seen all the evil as well as all the good when He made 
man, yet He did not let the evil become possible for 
the sake of the good. He foresaw how He could 
overrule sin, how He could redeem men from it, how 
it would give Him occasion to manifest His justice 
and His grace. Still the question " why ? " is not 
fully answered. It may be some time. The nearest 



THE BEGINNING AND END OF SIN. 167 

we can now come to an answer is that it was not j&ttinsr 
that God should be the only free being in the universe, 
though with the creation of finite beings who were 
free came the possibility of sin. 

2. God made sin possible ; but, secondly, man has 
made sin actual. This we all admit, for it is what we 
all see. We have taken the godlike freedom with 
which we were dowered at our birth that we might be 
holy as God is holy, and in the use of it have made 
ourselves opposite to him. The same high liberty 
which in him works out righteousness and truth, 
works out sin in us. There is no escaping this point. 
Our consciences hold us to it. The terrible severity 
with which we denounce the wickedness of which the 
earth is full, holds us to it. Amid all the forms of 
good which look out on us from among the monuments 
of our race, we are forced to see that every page of 
human history is more or less blotted with human 
sins. We see them, and we lay them at the door of 
the persons who committed them. If they were free, 
they were responsible,, and that is enough ; we do not 
look behind them to find something else on which to 
charge their guilt. If any theory of fate in theology, 
or any form of science evolving mind and spirit out of 
natural forces, comes along, that which is best and 
most authoritative in us rejects it. Our conscience 
and soul know better. We will not have our own 
remorse salved over in that way. We will not have 
the monsters of wickedness among men made irre- 
sponsible in any such way. Sin is due to man, not to 
something above or behind him. It cannot be traced 
to his circumstances. So far as it is sin, it begins in 
his own free will ; thence it proceeds and comes forth, 
and defiles the man. His lusts, that is, his natural 



168 SERMONS. 

desires or propensities, may be a matter of inheritance ; 
but not till these have yielded themselves as Eve 
yielded in Eden, do they, in the words of our text, 
bring forth sin. The sin begins wholly in the man 
himself, that sin which when it is finished bringeth 
forth death. Whenever any act of wrong- doing has 
been clearly traced to any man's door, and he is found 
to be one endowed with the common faculties of men, 
it is idle for him to try to shirk his fault. We do 
not let him off ; nor does his own conscience, nor hu- 
man law. Adam tried to lay off his sin on Eve, and 
she hers on the serpent ; but God held them each to 
their own doing. They knew the sin was theirs, or 
they would not have been ashamed and fled out of 
the garden. However deceptive our thoughts may be 
on many subjects, yet on this one subject they are 
thoroughly trustworthy, dear friends. We know that 
our sins are our own. Whatever may have been our 
wrong-doing toward God, or men, or ourselves, it be- 
longs to us and not to some other person or thing. 
We do not thank anybody for trying to apologize for 
us. If we are honest, we do not attempt to shirk. 
The fact of our guilt flames up within us, and our cry 
is for that which shall quench the flame. We take to 
ourselves the words of David in the 51st Psalm. Our 
conscience laughs a horrid laugh at the man who 
would heal our hurt lightly, or would persuade us that 
it is not our hurt, but due to something else. That 
which shall create a clean heart in us, and renew 
within us a right spirit, is the only ministry which 
can give us true relief. And to this strong cry of our 
souls that all sin begins in man, the Bible gives its 
loud Amen. Dear friends, did you ever hear a man 
madly say that we shall soon get rid of our Bibles? 



THE BEGINNING AND END OF SIN. 169 

We never shall till we get rid of ourselves. The voices 
of our own hearts are re-echoed from between its lids. 
On a great many points, and especially on this subject 
of sin, it speaks back to us what our consciences affirm. 
It tells us that man alone is responsible for the exist- 
ence of sin in all its smallest or mightiest and most 
terrible forms. " When a righteous man turneth away 
from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and 
dieth in them, for his iniquity that he hath done shall 
he die. Again, when the wicked man turneth away 
from his wickedness that he hath committed, and 
doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save 
his soul alive." The iniquities of the fathers shall 
not be on the children, nor of the children on the 
fathers ; the righteousness of the righteous shall be 
upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be 
upon him. So fearful a thing is it, dear friends, to 
be made in the image of God, to be heirs and posses- 
sors of the divine faculty of free-will, to have it left to 
us to say whether we will go upward or downward in 
our desires, whether we will be centres of good or of 
evil in the world, whether we will pour the light of 
love or the gloom and disorder of selfishness about us 
on our way through life. 

3. God made sin possible, man has made it actual ; 
and the next question is. Does habit make sin perpet- 
ual ? Here we must answer the inquiry as to the con- 
tinuance of the punishment of sin. The punishment 
will be perpetual if the sin is perpetual. Whether 
this is a doctrine of any special theology, or of the 
Bible even, we need not now stop to ask. It is a doc- 
trine of every human conscience. You all admit, nay 
you stoutly insist, that a man will be punished with 
remorse as long as he sins ; and you also insist that no 



170 SERMONS. 

right-minded person can look on the wrong-doer but 
with displeasure. But these are the two elements of 
the punishment of sin. The " worm " of Scripture is 
the evil-doer's own remorse, and the " fire " of Scrip- 
ture is the displeasure which God and all holy beings 
feel toward him. Will the worm ever die? or will 
the fire ever be quenched ? Yes, we most confidently 
and gladly answer ; they will both come to an end, if 
the habit of sinning ever comes to an end. Do away 
with the cause and you will no longer have the effect. 
Dry up the fountain of sin, and the bitter waters of 
punishment for it will cease to flow. But will that 
fountain be in all cases dried up ? May not the habit 
of sinning become fixed and unchangeable ? Your 
experience and observation teach you something here. 
You say that " an ounce of prevention is worth a 
pound of cure." You tremble when you see a young 
person forming an evil habit, for you know the power 
of habit. The longer he continues in his evil course, 
the less hope you have of him. Can you not think 
of some for whom you have almost ceased to hope, 
nay, for whom you have no hope whatever left? Here 
is the question. Let the light of your experience 
shine upon it, and think it out for yourself. However 
tenderly you may long for any, and though the way 
of life is open to every soul, yet you know better than 
I can tell you, how improbable it is that one to whom 
sin has become a second nature will ever cease from 
sinning. 

I am anxious to hold your minds to the one fact of 
sin, dear friends, not letting them wander off to " the 
wages of sin," in order that you may not mistake the 
motives which should lead you to seek deliverance 
from sin. Not the punishment of wrong-doing, but 



THE BEGINNING AND END OF SIN. 171 

wrong-doing itself is what you should be afraid of. 
As holiness, though attended by peace and joy, is 
nobler than they, so sin is a worse evil than the 
remorse with which it is ever joined. Holiness is so 
excellent that we ought to seek it, though it should 
fill us with pain ; wickedness is so base that we ought 
to shun it, though it were sure to fill us with peace 
and joy. Our conduct, that is, should be just what 
our conscience now tells us it ought to be, though its 
consequences to us should be just the reverse of what 
we have as yet found them to be. If wrong could 
open the kingdom of heaven to you, it would be your 
duty to shun it, as you are bound to do right whatever 
misery it may seem to you to involve. 

What is that death, dear friends, which sin is said 
to bring forth when it is finished ? Do not think of 
it as some outward king of terrors which rushes sud- 
denly upon you, or as a kind of judicial infliction 
which an unfeeling sheriff administers. Think of it 
as something very different from that. It is a dying 
process going on within you, which, if never arrested 
but allowed to work itself fully out, will end in spirit- 
ual death. That is the death which comes to the sin- 
ning soul. Your sins, if persisted in, will at length 
separate between you and God, so that you shall no 
more feel the light of His love ; they will withdraw 
you from His presence into outer darkness, where you 
will be without Him, and without hoj)e in the world. 
That you should suffer for your sins is not so great an 
evil as that you should sin ; for the suffering may do 
you good, but the sin mars, distorts, and spoils that in 
you which is noble and like God. Ah, if you could 
see the sin as it is, and its steady tendency toward 
spiritual death in you, you would not need to be told 



172 SERMONS. 

of any other punishment ! You would cast it from 
you as St. Paul cast the viper which had fastened on 
his hand into the fire. You would thank God for His 
warnings to you not to delay repentance, but to seek 
His face while it is called to-day, lest the fangs of the 
sinful habit become securely fastened in you, and its 
deadly poison extended to the very sources of your 
life. I need not tell you that sin, when thus finished, 
brings forth death. You have eyes as well as I. You 
see, and you reason from what you see ; and creed or 
no creed, you are perfectly certain that sinful habits 
may be persisted in till aU true spiritual life shall be 
destroyed. 

But the Bible speaks to us, dear friends, as though 
that life in us were already extinct. It says that the 
death which sin produces has come upon the world ; 
not that we shall die in trespasses and sins, but that 
we are dead in them. This, however, is not the final 
death, not the death from which there is no resurrec- 
tion. It is a kind of suspended animation in which 
our spirits now are. We are not twice dead, not 
plucked up by the roots. Some of us may have more 
spiritual life than others, but we all have enough to 
believe in Jesus Christ. He is our resurrection and 
our life. He will raise us up. He came that we 
might have life, and that we might have it more 
abundantly. However much sin may have benumbed 
your soul, you to-day have life enough in you to take 
hold on Him who is the bringer of life to you from 
God ; but if you delay that act of faith till the work 
of sin is finished up in you, what prospect have you 
that you will perform it, whether in this world or the 
next, or though there were a thousand worlds to come ? 
Our great and blessed hope, fuU of immortality, is 



THE BEGINNING AND END OF SIN. 173 

that Jesus Christ has come into this world to save us ; 
and without trying to draw aside the solemn veil of 
the future, let our knowledge of what sin itself is, and 
of the slow death with which it is even now torturing 
us, keep us from saying to Him, " Go thy way for this 
time," and make us hasten to His feet to say, " My 
Lord and my God." 



THE VALLEY OF VISION. 

Come from the four winds, breath, and breathe upon these slain, 
that they may live. — EzEK. xxxvii. 9. 

Who are the slain? Wherein are they slain? 
What has slain them ? Why are they a mournful 
sight ? What glad fact does the vision of them take 
for granted ? And how can they be made to live ? 
These are some of the questions which the text leads 
us to ask, and to which the word of God gives us 
explicit answers. 

1. In regard to the first question, Who are the 
slain ? it is clear (1) that they are not those faithful 
servants of God whom He has taken to Himself. For 
they never die. They live on, though slain with the 
sword. The God of Abraham is not a God of the 
dead, but of the living ; all live unto Him. " Whoso- 
ever liveth and belie veth in Me shall never die," said 
Christ at the grave of Lazarus. Those devoted Chris- 
tians of every age and country, who have passed into 
the life beyond life, are most effectually doing God's 
work where they now are. We ought not to wish 
them back again in the flesh. We do not think of a 
valley of dry bones, like that which the prophet saw 
in vision, when we recall their names. Are they not 
all ministering spirits? They are the cloud of wit- 
nesses by which we are compassed about. They in- 
spire us with their presence, and their works do follow 
them in the earth. There is no occasion t& call for 



THE VALLEY OF VISION. 175 

any divine breath to come and breathe on them and 
make them live ; for they were never more alive, or 
more active in promoting the glory of God, than now, 
wherever they may be in His dominions. (2) Nor 
can the slain to whom this question points us be those 
whom Christ has never yet made alive. Undoubtedly 
the dead in soul, those who are dead toward God, are 
meant ; but not those who have never yet believed. 
Only that which is alive can be slain ; and the Bible 
nowhere represents unconverted men as alive, but as 
spiritually dead. Adam was slain in soul, and died 
unto God, in the day when he forsook God. But all 
his posterity, St. Paul argues, became dead in him. 
" As in Adam aU. die, so in Christ shall all be made 
alive." "You hath He quickened," says the same 
apostle in another place, " who were dead in trespasses 
and sins." They had never been alive. They were 
born with their spirits dead toward God. They had 
never communed with God, or even known Him, 
though He was their Father, till Christ quickened 
them. There is sore need that the breath should come 
from the four winds and breathe on these spirits 
which have never yet lived ; but they are not the slain 
over whom the yearning cry in our text is lifted up. 
(3) The slain here, dear friends, are those whom the 
Spirit once made alive to God, but who have fallen 
away from Him under the power of the world. Back- 
sliders, worldljMninded Christians, those who neglect 
their religious duties, and break the vows of God 
which are upon them, church-members who are living 
the lives of unbelievers, — they are the slain for 
whom this prayer, " Come, O breath," is offered. 
The breath of life, which is God's indwelling spirit, 
has gone out of them ; and the call to that spirit is to 



176 SERMONS. 

come back into them. The prophet Ezekiel thought 
of the members of the church of God in His day. 
They were gone into the power of their enemies. 
They were scattered among the nations. They had 
forgotten the Lord that bought them, and were bow- 
ing down to idols. Only a small remnant of faith- 
ful ones survived to bewail the apostasy of the many. 
Is it not strikingly so now ? How small the propor- 
tion of Christ's nominal followers, even here among 
us, who are earnestly laboring with Him ! Is not 
our own church sadly like the scene in the valley of 
vision ? A few, thank God, have not been slain by 
the worldliness about them. But are they not almost 
all scattered ? Are they not inconstant and weak in 
their devotion to Christ, or utterly indifferent to Him ? 
Of the ten lepers whom Christ cleansed, but one re- 
turned to give glory to God. " Where are the nine ? " 
is the question which we are all the time constrained 
to ask, when we see how few are eager to be at the 
place of prayer, and to give themselves to the sadly 
neglected work of the church. " Slain, slain, slain ! " 
is the exclamation which rushes to our lips as we 
think of the scores upon scores of nominal Christians 
right about us, who are mouldering away in their 
worldliness, undisturbed by the appeal which goes 
forth to them, to come up with us to the help of the 
Lord against the mighty. 

2. But wherein lies the appropriateness of this 
image ? In what respect are idle professors of reli- 
gion " slain " ? They have fallen, and their spiritual 
life has gone out of them, though not beyond the 
power of God to send it back into them. The word 
" slain " is taken from the vocabulary of war. It 
suggests a battlefield, where armed hosts are mar- 



THE VALLEY OF VISION. 177 

shalled in deadly strife. We look over the ground 
where Christ, the Captain of His people, has been 
leadino' them ao'ainst their enemies. Those enemies 
have proved too mighty for them. They were not 
clad with the whole armor of God. They did not take 
the weapons which are mighty to the pulling-down 
of strongholds. Instead of conquering their enemies, 
they have fallen down before them. They have let 
themselves be slain, as with the sword, by their jeal- 
ousy and ambition and pride, by their strifes and sus- 
picions among themselves, by their love of ease, by 
their devotion to pleasure and to gain, by their weari- 
ness in well-doing, by their dread of inconvenience 
and hardship for Christ's sake. As soldiers of Christ 
they are slain by these enemies, and their bones lie 
bleaching in the valley. They are dead in spirit, 
killed in soul ; of no more use to the Captain of our 
salvation in fighting his battles against sin than the 
hosts which sleep on the field of a Waterloo or Gettj^s- 
burg are for the purposes of carnal strife. They are 
dead soldiers of the Lord ; buried, — nay, unburied, 
for we cannot hide from our eyes the ghastly spectacle 
which they make while they lie together on the field 
where the world, the flesh, and the devil clove them 
down. 

3. If we should go on and attempt to gain a full 
knowledge of each foe concerned in this slaying of 
God's people, there would be an endless task before 
us. It may be said of them, as of the evil spirits 
that went out of the man in the gospel, that their 
name, is legion. Chief among them is unbelief, that 
easily besetting sin, which in all its forms is an adder 
in our path^ a hungry lion which croucheth at our 
door. If we could keep ourselves from trusting in 



178 SERMONS. 

anything but Christ; if we were all the time con- 
scious of being given up to Him, and of glorying in 
nothino' save His cross ; if we could have that faith 
in the progress and final triumph of His kingdom 
which is the substance of things hoped for, the evi- 
dence of things not seen, — we should at once get the 
victory over ten thousand foes to our spiritual life. 
These foes I cannot enumerate. They are as manifold 
and various as the daily fortunes and changes of our 
lives. Sometimes they come in battalions ; sometimes 
perhaps, though rarely, alone. They may be outward, 
or may make the assault within our hearts. They are 
anything which separates between us and our God ; 
anything which dims the vision of eternal things, and 
of the destiny of souls out of Christ ; anytliing which 
keeps us from consecrating ourselves to the Lord's 
service, or which tempts us to grow remiss in our duty 
to Him. These are the destroying angel which flies 
over our dwellings, leaving death in every house where 
the blood of the paschal lamb is not found. These 
are the giants and the Anakim, before which we fall 
down slain the moment our faith in God wavers. 
These are the Philistines who oppress us and put out 
our eyes ; the Syrians and the Assyrians who make 
war upon us ; the Benhadads and Nebuchadnezzars 
who carry us away into captivity. If any are weak 
among us, or any sleep ; if we seem to sit in the midst 
of the slain, and no army gathers at the sound of the 
trumpet to march with us against the hosts of sin, it 
is because God's people have fallen back from their 
great Leader, and have allowed a bewitching but de- 
ceitful world to get the dominion over them. 

4. And now, ceasing to ask who slew all these, let 
us turn to the scene itself, — this great multitude of 



THE VALLEY OF VISION. 179 

church-members who have a name to live, but are 
dead. Is it not a sight too mournful for any words 
to describe ? A spiritual graveyard ; a battlefield 
from which the victorious enemies of truth have 
marched away, and left the slain friends of God lying 
about in mouldering* heaps. We beautify our cem- 
eteries where men's bodies are buried. There the 
good, the young, the venerable, the gentle-hearted 
softly lie, and sweetly sleep, low in the ground. Even 
on great fields of battle, the grim aspect of death 
soon passes away, and the grass and flowers overgrow 
the graves of the dead. It does not affright or dis- 
tress us to visit such spots. They are hallowed by 
great memories. They charm us with their quiet dells, 
their shady walks, their silent recesses. We are reluc- 
tant to quit them ; for they fill us with tender visions, 
with calm thoughts, with noble resolves. But how 
different the spiritual cemetery on which God to-day 
looks in His backshdden and worldly church ! No 
beaut}^ here, but a ghastly spectacle, at which the very 
soul in us should creep 1 This scene, in which our 
God walks, is not the Eden of old which He made 
and fenced about ; it is a Golgotha, — a place of 
skulls and bleaching bones. Oh how we should envy 
the buried dead, who sleep in Christ, when we contrast 
their blessed peace with the wretched state of the 
dead in soul, slain by their love of the world, whose 
unburied forms moulder before our eyes ! Slain in 
spirit, killed at their souls' centre, their love of Christ 
withered and dead, the hopes of heaven which once 
flourished in their hearts now a whitened and crum- 
bling heap. Aside from this mournfulness of the 
spectacle in itself, consider (1) What a hindrance it 
is to tlie word of truth. I do not here offer any de- 



180 SERMONS. 

fense of those who point to backsliders in the church 
as their reason for continuing in the world. Christ 
has come and spoken unto all men, and if any will 
not hear His words, they have no cloak for their sin. 
We may always find some who show by their lives that 
Christ has saving power. When men are in search of 
excuses, they will find them somewhere. Even Christ 
Himself was a stumbling-block to the Jews. In our 
own hearts is the place where we are to look, if we 
would know why we should come after Christ. But 
while the sins of church-members are no excuse for 
the worldhng, his responsibility is no excuse for 
them. And though they alike stand or fall to the 
same Master, it is the duty of Christ's own people to 
honor Him before men. They are the light of the 
world. They are the salt of the earth. The world 
should not make them its Bible, but it does. If they 
fall away from Christ, slight His service, and become 
spiritually dead, other men are slow to begin the new 
life. They fear a similar result in their own case. 
Hence the word of truth is hindered and made weak. 
The salt, so far from saving anything, has lost its 
savor, and is itself trodden under,^ foot of men. (2) 
And not only do lapsed and worldly Christians hin- 
der the truth. Consider how great good they might 
accomplish if all were earnestly at work for Christ. 
A dead army discourages its friends, and makes its 
enemies feel strong. But if there be a noise, and a 
shaking, and the bones come together, bone to his 
bone, and the sinews and the flesh come upon them, 
and they are covered with the skin above, and the 
breath breathes upon them, then they stand up on 
their feet, an exceeding great army. Their awaken- 
ing out of death, and rising up as one host in battle 



THE VALLEY OF VISION. 181 

order, revives the fainting heart of the prophet. He 
no longer mourns, but is full of joy. He feels strong 
and safe, and is sure of victory. If all the people in 
this city, who profess to love our Lord Jesus Christ, 
were united as one man, and wholly alive in witness- 
ing for Him and pressing His claims on the ungodly, 
worldliness and unbelief here would soon be things of 
the past. If all nominal Christians throughout the 
world were thus united and devoted, we should soon 
hear the cry, " The kingdoms of this world have become 
the kingdom of our Lord." No wonder, then, that the 
valley of vision is a valley of the shadow of death to 
earnest Christians. Nothing else so tries their faith. 
Nothino^ else so weakens their hands. Nothino- else 
so turns the truth into a lie. Nothing else so holds 
them back from the conquest of sin and unbelief. 

5. But, dear friends, it is not all death, not all 
gloom. There is one glad fact which even the lament 
in our text takes for granted. The prophet was yet 
alive, and God had not forgotten to be gracious. 
There is hope for Zion, great hope, so long as there is 
a remnant who cry unto God for her, and who will not 
hold their peace till He makes her a praise. The 
captives hanging their harps on the willows, refusing 
to sing songs, sitting down by the rivers of Babylon 
in their tears, are indeed a mournfid sight. But God 
w^ll have regard to such love for His church. The 
devotion of the faithful few, weeping over the desola- 
tions of Zion when they remember her, is precious in 
His sight. There was hope for Israel even in the 
time of Ahab, because of the seven thousand who had 
not bowed the knee to Baal. Ezra and Nehemiah, 
full of faith and holy purpose amid the ruins of Jeru- 
salem, are a pledge that its temple and walls shall be 



182 SERMONS. 

rebuilt. There was hope that the bondmen would go 
out of Egypt, when Moses arose to pity their wrongs. 
The captivity should surely return into their own land, 
out of all the countries into which they had been 
driven ; for Daniel was praying, and Ezekiel and 
Isaiah prophesying, and in every place a chosen few 
were crying unto God to remember His covenant. 
The soldiers of Christ will live again, though the 
world has slain them, wherever there are enough ear- 
nest souls to compass the altar, and cry unto God for 
the sacred fire to fall from heaven. A hundred and 
twenty thus praying brought the first great revival in 
the Christian church. God would have spared Sodom 
if there had been ten righteous men in it. Solomon 
tells us of a poor man, so obscure that no one remem- 
bered him, who saved a city. How many times Israel 
provoked God, yet for His servant David's sake He 
would not destroy the wicked nation. It is a sad sight 
which the prophet beholds, sitting in the valley full of 
dry bones ; yet the prophet himself, beseeching the 
breath to come from the four winds, relieves the scene. 
We have hope even for the dead, while we look on 
him and listen to his earnest cry. So at the present 
time, though God's people have been slain, and are 
fallen down in multitudes before their enemies, we 
have hope. Not all are kiUed. There are those left 
who love the church, and who bewail its desolations. 
They show their love, not only by their tears, but 
by their efforts. They are ready to give their time, 
to give their money; to go out of their particular 
churches and join heart and hand with all Christians ; 
to lay aside their special tastes and methods, and to 
work in such ways as God seems to be now choosing 
for the gathering in of the lost. Is there not, even in 



THE VALLEY OF VISION. 183 

this, a noise and a shaking? and though God may 
still further try our faith, yet should not this which 
we already see be a sign to us that God is ready to let 
His light shine, and to make His glory rise upon us ? 

6. If such be the glad quickening which is about 
to come, what are its instruments? Through what 
agencies, or by what means, are the multitudes of 
nominal Christians about us, now dead in worldliness 
and unbelief, to be revived in soul, and drawn together 
as one loyal host after the advancing standard of the 
cross ? (1) The first grand instrument is the plain 
and pointed preaching of God's word. "Prophesy 
upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, 
hear the word of the Lord." Don't hear fables, don't 
hear theories, don't hear speculations, but hear the 
word of the Lord. So important was it that the 
prophet should proclaim God's word and nothing else, 
that in sending Him to Israel, God said, "All My 
words that I shall speak unto thee receive in thine 
heart, and hear wdth thine ears. And go, get thee 
unto them of the captivity, unto the children of thy 
people, and speak unto them, and tell them. Thus 
saith the Lord God, whether they will hear or for- 
bear." God has never authorized any one to preach 
anything but His word, in all efforts either for the 
quickening of backsliders or the gathering in of the 
unsaved. That word was the two-edged sword put into 
the hands of the prophets and into the hands of the 
apostles. Besides their own consecrated lives, nothing 
was said to them about using any other weapon. And 
this they were to use at all hazards, when men yielded 
to it, and when they mocked. Is it possible, dear 
brethren, that any of us do not see that the word of 
God is stUl the most effective weapon we can wield ? 



184 SERMONS. 

Look at the conquests which are being won with it at 
the present day. The Bible has been called an anti- 
quated book, worn out and outgrown. Its enemies 
have tried to prove that it contradicts science and his- 
tory, that it teaches bad morals, that it is inconsistent 
with itself. They have buried it and burned it ; they 
have held it up to ridicule, and denounced it as the 
chief enemy of human progress. Yet to-day, in the 
most enlightened cities of the world, where learning 
and philosophy have their proudest seats, the Bible is 
still a two-edged sword. The greatest intellects bow 
to it as to no other book. It draws whole populations 
together to be charmed, convinced of sin, comforted, 
purified, and blessed, as nothing else ever has or ever 
can. You may call it "foolishness," but it is wiser 
than men. You may call it "weakness," but it is 
stronger than men. Oh that we might learn to obey 
God, and speak nothing but His word wherever we 
prophesy, in view of the proofs that He owns and 
crowns such faithfulness, of which all history and the 
whole world are full ! (2) But while the Lord's 
servant thus prophesied, he also prayed. " Come 
from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon 
these slain, that they may live." This was the burden 
of his supplication for the dry bones, after he had 
spoken God's word unto them. The bones came to- 
gether, and were covered with the flesh and the skin 
while he prophesied ; but there was no life in them. 
They lay silent and motionless, still a vast field of the 
dead, waiting for the mighty breath to come from the 
four winds. So our proclaiming of God's word to 
the dead in sin is not enough. We may awaken curi- 
osity, we may stimulate inquiry, we may produce a 
fair external morality ; but there is no breath, no spir- 



THE VALLEY OF VISION. 185 

itual life, no indwelling Christ, no kingdom of God 
set up in the soul. For that, the great and blessed 
object of all our striving, we must betake ourselves 
to prayer. " Come, O breath ! Holy Ghost, blessed 
Comforter, Spirit of all truth, only Regenerator and 
only Sanctifier, Essence and Life of the Eternal God, 
thou art all our hope. Come, as thou didst when 
the place where the disciples were met together was 
shaken, and breathe upon these slain, and they shall 
live." That is the prayer which must break from all 
our hearts, with strong crying and tears, if we would 
see the dead bodies stand upon their feet, an exceeding 
great army, ready to follow the Captain of our sal- 
vation whithersoever He shall lead them. The Holy 
Spirit must take of the things of Christ, and show 
unto them that are dead in sin. The truth which 
quickens and saves does not enter into the natural 
man and abide there. He welcomes it, and is made 
one with Christ by it, only as He has the Spirit of 
God. Elijah can repair the altar of the Lord, and 
lay on it the sacrifice ; but not till the fire descends 
from heaven do the people fall on their faces and 
say, "The Lord, He is the God; the Lord, He is 
the God." The disciples can roll away the stone 
from the door of the sepulchre, but not till the voice 
of eternal love pierces its gloom do the dead come 
forth. 



HOW ONE'S THINKING IS HIMSELF. 

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he. — Prov. xxiii. 7. 

Many lessons of encouragement and of warning 
may be drawn from these words, some of whicli you are 
now invited to consider. Solomon is speaking of the 
way in which one should conduct hunself in the pres- 
ence of a ruler. He should not presume at all on the 
ruler's polite treatment of him, for behind that out- 
ward courtesy there may be an evil intent. Not as 
he seems and speaks is the ruler, but as he thinks in 
his heart. He may use smooth words more to hide 
than to express his meaning. Do not estimate him 
by what you see and hear, but wait till you know 
what the thoughts of his heart toward you are, if 
you would rightly judge him. Though it is true that 
his thinking must give color to his behavior, and 
there is no such thing as successful hypocrisy to the 
practiced eye, yet the thinking is the man, the be- 
havior is not. 

1. The first lesson of the text, then, is that our real 
manhood or womanhood is independent of everything 
outward. It is what the tenor of our thousfhts is. 
Though the inward tends to work outward, yet you 
may be a good man or woman under a forbidding 
exterior, and you may be a bad man or woman under 
a fair exterior. You remember Abner and his fate at 
the hand of Joab. Joab sent him a very polite invita- 
tion to come to Hebron, and he came. And there, in 



HOW ONE'S THINKING IS HIMSELF. 187 

the gate, having taken him aside, and while speaking 
quietly to him, as if to show him some special cour- 
tesy, he " smote him under the fifth rib, that he died." 
So also did Joab treat Amasa, another rival warrior, 
of whose influence with the new king David he was 
jealous. Amasa was deceived by fair words and po- 
lite treatment, as Abner had been. The true Joab 
was not the man who said, "Art thou in health, my 
brother ? " and took him by the beard with the right 
hand and kissed him, but the man who underneath 
all this was contriving to slay him. Just the opposite 
to this in manner often was the behavior of men who 
were full of a friendly spirit. King Saul had no 
truer friend than Samuel, yet how terribly Samuel 
rebuked him ! The reproofs of Nathan to David were 
a true kindness ; he found them to be an excellent 
oil which did not break his head. The destroyers of 
Ahab were Jezebel and her prophets who so flattered 
him ; it was Elijah, sternly upbraiding him, who 
yearned to save both him and his kingdom. The poet 
Shakespeare, in his tragedy of King Lear, has given a 
vivid picture of what I am now trying to make plain. 
When the old king wishes to lay aside public cares, 
and is about to divide up his kingdom among his 
three daughters, how profuse the two elder in words 
of strong and undying affection ! while the other 
daughter is so measured in speech as to seem not to 
care for her father's rich gifts. He is deceived by 
these different manners. He gives all his goods to the 
two crafty ones who afterwards break his heart, and 
drives from his presence the true child for whose sake 
his lost kingdom is afterwards returned to him. She 
was the true woman at the first, for her thoughts 
were true ; and for this true womanhood, shown out- 



188 SERMONS. 

wardly in tlie end, her father crowned her. This 
lesson, so often set us in common history, making so 
many of the charms and surprises of actual life, is 
made specially prominent all tln^ough the Bible. As 
you think, so you are. Do not rely on the outward 
appearance which you make, dear friend. That is 
not you. That is not the man. You are what your 
habitual thinking 'is. Do the beautiful vestments 
clothe a noble and pure manhood, or do they hide a 
soul which is full of corruption ? is the question for 
you to consider. And, on the other hand, if you have 
nothing outward to recommend you, if there is no 
beauty in you that others desire, if your face is more 
marred than any man's, yet none can be truer than 
you, none worthier. Oh how it reconciles us to the 
diversities of human allotments, some so helped and 
some so hindered in life, some strong and healthy and 
some sick and feeble always, some born to wealth and 
some to poverty, some never lacking friends and some 
without human friends, some conspicuous and influ- 
ential and some obscure and unhonored, — how it 
reconciles us to all this diversity to see that none of it 
stands in the way of that which alone gives us value 
in God's eyes ! Your kingdom is within you. Your 
outward condition does not put a chain on your soul. 
The brother of high degree has no occasion to despise 
the brother of low degree, and the brother of low 
degree has no occasion to envy the brother of high 
degree ; for what each of them thinks, that he is. 
You are base if the tenor of your thoughts is base, 
and noble if your whole inward life is noble. 

2. Another lesson to be drawn from this text is, 
that you must watch the free action of your soul if 
you would know what sort of a person you are. 



HOW ONE'S THINKING IS HIMSELF. 189 

There is a grain of truth in the fancy that men reveal 
their real character in their dreams, that in their cups 
they show what they are. They do, so far as their 
whole inner man is excited and left to act itself out 
freely. The sons of Zebedee once in a moment of 
excitement betrayed themselves, their sudden anger 
showing in them a spirit which they did not know. 
The warrior Achilles, who was passing himself off for 
anything but a warrior, showed his military passion 
when it was appealed to while he happened to be off 
his guard. Dear friends, take yourselves out of the 
midst of all the restraints from evil and all the incen- 
tives to good which now surround you, and what would 
you be ? If honesty should cease to be the best policy, 
would you continue to be honest ? If it were just as 
safe to tell lies as to tell the truth, would you keep on 
telling only the truth all the same ? If you could get 
just as good a name by keeping all your money as by 
giving away freely, would you go on giving precisely 
as before ? If idleness were just as reputable as dili- 
gence, rude manners just as well liked as kind man- 
ners, if you were sure of just as many friends by 
showing yourself unfriendly as by showing yourself 
friendly, would you continue to be as careful in these 
things as you now are? If so, you have gained a 
great victory. Your manhood is of the true stamp. 
It needs not to be bolstered up by anything outward. 
Leave your soul to itself. Let it act freely. And 
then let its action take shape in external pictures, and 
be reflected upon you. Would it make a fresco which 
you would like to contemplate ? Yet the thinking — 
the free inner life, that is, as our text says — is the man. 
If that is good, if that is sound, if that is pure, then 
you may shut your eyes and see what is more glorious 



190 SERMONS. 

than all sensuous beauty. You can find nothing else 
in this world so fair as a beautiful soul. Having the 
witness to this inheritance within you, you can treat 
outward grandeurs as Christ did the kingdoms and 
glory of the world. You can be content, as He was, 
not to have where to lay your head. Then not only 
are you a king and priest to God, whatever your 
temporal condition, but you have been born of God. 
That wondrous change which Christ works out in the 
soul in which He dwells, is going forward within you. 
He is in that inner life of yours, and is its corner- 
stone. God is building you up on Him. His spirit 
witnesses with your spirit that your soul. His living 
temple, is rising higher and higher, and in all its rooms 
becoming fairer and more vast. He laid the founda- 
tion, and He will lay the topmost stone ; and all 
through the divine process, though no human eye 
admires it, you can secretly sing for joy, anticipating 
the day when the work shall be complete, and when 
the angels of God shall shout, " Grace, grace unto it." 
3. Again, we may gather from our text that the 
sources of one's manhood are in his thoughts. They 
are the mould of his character. They determine 
whether he shall be great or small, honorable or dis- 
honorable, before God. Since it is true that as we 
think in our hearts so we are, if we think large 
thoughts- we shall become large-souled, or if we think 
only small thoughts our souls will be dwarfed and 
shrivel up ; if we think pure thoughts our manhood 
or womanhood will be pure, but they will be impure if 
our thoughts are impure ; if our minds dwell all the 
time on earthly things, our whole character will grovel, 
whereas it will shine with a heavenly brightness if our 
conversation is in heaven. Now here is a trial or test 



HOW ONE'S THINKING IS HIMSELF. 191 

wliich God brings to us all. We stand at the point 
from which two divergent roads start oft'. God jiiits 
before us good and evil, and He says to each one of 
us, " Choose thou." The alternative is not merely for 
some j it is for all. God is impartial ; his gracious 
gifts are without monopoly or stint. It is just as open 
to the poorest as to the richest to have his soul con- 
cerned with great thoughts ; just as easy to the un- 
learned as to the learned ; no harder for the tender in 
years than for the wise and prudent. Such thoughts 
bend over us all, like the sky with its stars. What- 
ever your earthly condition, dear friends, this high 
culture of your soul is wholly within your reach. No 
man can shut you out from it. Let not your blind- 
ness, your weak yielding to what 3^ou call your un- 
friendly fate, keep you from entering upon it. God 
has come to shepherds, to slaves, to fishermen, to car- 
penters. And thus He still comes. The lower down 
you are in life, the more He loves to stoop to you 
and to raise you up above them that are high. The 
mighty themes of the gospel are all yours, and you 
may be moulded by them if you will. If you turn 
downward among frivolities and impurities, and make 
them the companions of your thoughts, then alas for 
you ! You are sowing to the flesh, and of the flesh 
shall reap corruption. But if you shut the door of 
your heart against this ignoble herd, and keep it open 
to Him who comes with the bright train of heavenly 
themes, then, in your shop, in your store, in your 
office, in your home, on your wharf or your ship, on 
your railway train, you shall grow daily into the' like- 
ness of the glorious truths which are your company. 
You will make yourself pure by walking with Him 
who is infinitely pure. Your whole inner life is made 



192 SERMONS. 

noble by your fellowship with Christ, for as you think 
in your heart so you are. You know what the words 
mean, " Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it 
are the issues of life." Your own experience is your 
blessed key to that text. You love to read the words 
of St. Paul: " Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are 
true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things 
are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things 
are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if 
there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think 
on these things." You have thought on them, and 
they have lifted you up to their own level. You have 
lived in heaven till you have caught its spirit. You 
have walked with God till the brightness of His char- 
acter shines out from yours. 

4. Or we may take our text as referring to the 
purposes which lie at the bottom of all our activity. 
What is our intention ? Why are we doing as men 
see us doing in our open life ? There is the thought 
of something to be gained, of some object to be won, 
in all this activity on which men look. Is the purpose 
selfish, or is it unselfish ? Are we thinking to do some- 
thing which will bless our fellow-men, or does our se- 
cret thought tell us that if we succeed we shall do them 
harm ? Is it our purpose to glorify God, or simply to 
please ourselves ? Here again, in this new view of it, 
it is his purpose of which he is thinking in his heart, 
which makes or unmakes the man. Is your purpose 
high ? it will lift you up to itself. Is it low ? it wiU 
drag you down to itself. Christ said to His disciples, 
" Where I am, there shall ye be," for they had in them 
a holy faith and purpose which took hold on Him. 
They could rise no higher than their purpose, as we 
cannot. Dear friends, the external work which you 



HOW ONE'S THINKING IS HIMSELF. 193 

do may all your lives be wholly noble. And noble 
friends may surround you. And you may dwell in 
noble mansions, full of all noble books and pictures. 
And you may look out on the noblest landscapes, and 
have noble teachers, examples, and opportunities, and 
yet be very ignoble yourself. No men ever had nobler 
surroundings, so far as this world goes, than the Roman 
emperors, some of whom touched the lowest bottom in 
the slough of moral baseness. And what was true of 
them, has been true of many, who had about them 
every incentive to a large and sound manhood. In 
spite of all helps, they went down so low that the 
greatest kindness we can do them is to forget them. 
Their low purpose unmanned and destroyed them in 
the midst of all their grandeurs. On the other hand, 
you may have none of the advantages which they had. 
You may be utterly forlorn and wretched in external 
condition. But is it your fixed and unconquerable 
purpose to be a true man or a true woman, all that 
Christ meant when He used those words ? Is He the 
pattern which you have set before you, and which 
your soul is on fire to see realized in yourself, what- 
ever troubles you must wade through? Then is that 
sacred purpose all the time moulding you. Christ 
feeds it out of His own life through secret channels. 
It is a part of His own fullness which He has breathed 
into you, and it will lift you to Him as surely as it 
came forth from Him. 

5. Again, the fact that a man is as he thinks in his 
heart makes him responsible for himself in a very 
peculiar and solemn way. If what you are to be in 
the future depended on something outside of yourself, 
dear friend, you might say that it is your fate which 
makes you bad or which makes you good. No man's 



194 SERMONS. 

circumstances lift Mm to God, and no man's circum- 
stances cast him down from God. This risina: or sink- 
ing on the scale of moral and spiritual worth is the 
result of his own deepest and inmost life. He thinks 
himself down into vice, into crime, into the power of 
his appetites, into a brutish and wicked and revolting 
state. Or, on the other hand, he thinks himself up 
into integrity, manliness, the love of all truth and of 
Him who was the truth. And the choice of the path 
along which our thinking shall take us is left to our- 
selves. No one can force us to turn either to the right 
hand or the left. However bound or hampered we 
may be in other respects, in our thoughts we are 
wholly free. In this kingdom within us we reign un- 
hindered. Our dominion over our thoughts is absolute. 
And since the thoughts make the man, or unmake 
him, we cannot put the blame off on something else, 
but must take it wholly to ourselves, if we are dwarfed 
and distorted in soul when we come up before God. 
Our manhood or womanhood is something intrusted 
to us, which we are to keep and to answer for, just as 
truly as the talents were intrusted to the servants or 
the vineyard to the husbandmen. You can be a good 
man if you will, no matter what hinders, since it de- 
pends on the thoughts of your heart, which are free. 
How this power within you exalts you above all the 
other works of God's hand ! It takes you out of 
nature, and raises you into the reahn of the super- 
natural. What a sense we have of the preciousness of 
the human soul, while we see it thus supreme over all 
things about it, independent, free to go whichever way 
it will ! No groove has been made for it in which it 
must forever move on. It thinks what it pleases, and 
hence becomes what it wills to be. No other creature 



HOW ONE'S THINKING IS HIMSELF. 195 

on earth has this power. The fact that we have it 
proves that we are the chiLh*en of God. It was given 
to us that in virtue of it we may hold ourselves up in 
communion with the Father of our spirits ; what con- 
demnation, then, do we deserve to meet at His hands, 
if we use it, against all the other helps which He 
gives, to sink ourselves far from Him ! Rejoice, O 
man, at that godlike spirit which is in you, but rejoice 
with trembling if you are ever tempted to think vain 
thoughts, or to harbor anjiihing in your heart which 
is turning you away from your heavenly Father's face. 
No difficulties or want of opportunities can harm you 
so long as you are true to yourself, and all the helps 
which either God or man can give wdll not save you if 
you have become false to yourself. Nothing outside 
of you, but your owai thinking, is either making or 
destroying you. If the thoughts of your heart are 
base, you are sinking down lower and lower ; but if 
they are noble, they are the wings on which you are 
steadily rising higher and higher. 

6. There is one other point, dear friends, on which I 
wish to say a word. What do you think of Christ ? 
How does He seem to you ? and how do you think of 
yourself in reference to Him ? Do you think of Him 
as your Master, and of yourself as His servant ? If 
not, should you not immediately begin to do so ? For 
in this case, as in all the others named, it is largely 
true that as you think so you are. Perhaps this 
should not be said to all men ; but are there not some 
here whose first duty is to think of themselves, and 
grow into the habit of thinking of themselves as ser- 
vants of Jesus Christ? To the rash, conceited man 
it may be said, "Let him that thinketh he standeth 
take heed lest he fall." To him who is eaten up with 



196 SERMONS. 

the opinion of Ms own righteousness should come the 
text, " If a man think himself to be something when 
he is nothing, he deceive th himself." But there are 
others, I am persuaded, who have done themselves 
great harm, and are still doing it, by being unwilling 
to think of themselves as Christ's disciples. I deny- 
no great truth as to their need of the work of the 
Holy Spirit in their hearts, or the desirableness that 
they should have clear evidence of such work; yet 
have they not repelled themselves from Christ, till 
they now seem to be far from Him, just by the habit 
of thinking that they do not belong to Him? This 
feeling grew up early in your heart, dear friend. It 
was put there perhaps by some wrong teaching, or by 
some wrong impression which you got of the truth. 
You ceased to class yourself with God's people, and 
learned to think of yourself as belonging with His 
enemies. And this soon grew to be a habit, and is 
now even a matter of conscience with you. You can 
think of no great change, either outward or inward, 
which you need to undergo. Your Christian friends 
wonder why you are unwilling to be ranked with them. 
No one regards you as a foe to the cause of Christ, 
for you love to honor and help it in many ways. Dear 
friend, is there not just one change which you need to 
undergo, and that a change in your way of thinking 
of yourself ? Thus far you have not thought of your- 
self as one of Christ's disciples. But change that 
habit, and think in your heart from this time forward 
that you are His follower, and see if the result will 
not be most blessed to you. It will give you a new 
point of view, from which you will see Christ and His 
people and all Christian truth putting on a new look. 
Thinking that you are Christ's friend, you will soon 



HOW ONE'S THINKING IS HIMSELF. 197 

find that you are His friend. Numbering yourself 
with His disciples, it will gradually dawn upon you 
that you are His disciple. Engaging in His work as 
not only His, but yours, you will come to know and to 
feel that He is yours and you are His. 



THE IDEAL LIFE. 

But it shall be one day, which shall he known to the Lord, not day, 
nor night : but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be 
light. — Zech. xiv. 7. 

This text pictures to us that glorious state to which 
the whole church of God shall one day come, and in 
which every man already is to the degree that he 
dwells in God and God in him. When the life of 
God is formed witliin our lives so as to fill us with its 
blessed tides, then, dear friends, the unchangeableness 
of God also becomes ours. Our religious experience 
is not now stormy and now serene, not now a day and 
now a night ; it is always one and the same thing, and 
there is in it a depth of joyous peace which neither 
sunlight nor starlight can figure forth. 

We are most familiar with the second half of the 
text, " It shall come to pass that at evening time it 
shaU be light," and we often use it in a way quite 
foreign to the prophet's purpose. Putting a meaning 
on the words which our lot in life or that of our friends 
suggests to us, the " evening time," bright and calm, 
is the quiet old age which succeeds to an active and 
troubled life ; or it is the feeling of rest and victory 
which, in the midst of life, comes to us when we have 
fought some hard and long battle through to a success- 
ful end. How like a stormy day succeeded by a golden 
sunset many of the most valuable lives are ! Looking 
upon the flaming west and walking toward it, while 



THE IDEAL LIFE. 199 

the angry clouds are rolling away eastward behind us, 
we are like the worn soldier of the cross, — his cam- 
paigns now ended, heaven opening before him, and a 
nobler and nobler glory lighting up his face as he 
moves on toward the immortals. We have often seen 
the clear morning sun shining through the rain-cloud, 
and painting there the bow which forewarned us to be 
ready for the tempest. How soon that early bright- 
ness was obscured ! The heavens grew black and 
wild, and all things on the earth — the birds, the ani- 
mals, the trees, and the streams of water — seemed 
to shrink and creep with apprehension. Even the sea 
grew dark, and hushed its voice, as if getting all its 
store of might ready for the onset. Then the wind 
came, first in gentle puffs, hardly cooling our cheek, 
turning the light leaves, and barely rippling the sur- 
face of the water. But at length the thunder, whose 
distant rumble had been marshaling the elements, 
sounded the charge with its terrible voice, when they 
all rushed to the battle. The trees bent and moaned 
in the blast, and many of them were broken or up- 
torn. The summer brooks, swollen to mad torrents, 
swept away the farmer's fences, and drowned his crops. 
The fierce cannonade of the waves and the headlands 
began. The flying and whirhng clouds shut out the 
sky. And all living things sought shelter from the 
wind and rain. We have often seen such a day as 
this. And then, near its close, we have seen the wind 
cease to blow and the rain to descend. The west grew 
bright, and the thunder died away. The bow was on 
the receding storm. The sunlight began to stream in 
the groves and along the lawns, every drop of water 
in the grass and on the buds was itself a gem, and 
the sun was floating away in an expanse of emerald 



200 SERMONS. 

and gold, — all together making a scene too bright, 
too sweet, too peaceful, too uplifting and satisfying for 
tongue or pencil to describe. How often we have sat 
in such a sunset, and thought of the words of our 
text, " It shall come to pass at evening time that it 
shall be light." And then there have come up before 
us the names of the brave and faithful in Christ Jesus, 
whose lives had been like that day of tempest, but 
whose last days were like that setting sun. We say 
that Bunyan was right in making a Beulah end the 
weary journey of his pilgrim. Job had a bright even- 
ing at the close of his day of trial ; and so had Jacob, 
and David, and the apostle John ; nor has this Sab- 
bath at the end of life been denied to many another 
heroic servant of Christ, whom the world fiercely 
assailed, but of whom the world was not worthy. Or 
perhaps, as we sit in that bright ending of the stormy 
day, we look around on our friends who are in any 
trouble, and say to them, " Behold what your trial is 
bringing you to." We try to comfort him whose body 
disease has invaded, and who fears that he must carry 
an aching brain, and drag after him weary limbs, the 
rest of his life. We cheer him by telling him to look 
beyond the gloomy present to the evening time when 
it shall be light. We say to those whose earthly ex- 
pectation has been cut off, whose business has all gone 
wrong, whose efforts to do good and be useful make 
them no friends, who sit in sadness at home while the 
blossoms over which their hearts yearn are fading 
away, who find the struggle against temptation in 
their own hearts and lives so desperate that they fear 
the issue, — to all such, and to any other children of 
men who are sorely tried, we say, " See what a bed of 
glory has been given to yonder sun on which to sink 



THE IDEAL LIFE. 201 

to rest, and think of the day of storms which is just 
over. Expect such an ending to your sorrows, your 
afflictions, your trials, your temptations. It is com- 
ing, coming, — that evening time in which it shall be 
light ; if not yours in this life, it shall be in the next ; 
for what is heaven but a bright endless evening, where 
all your trouble shall be turned into peace, and from 
which you shall look back only to praise and bless 
your God for the life on earth which He gave you? " 
Thus do we comfort one another with these words. 
But they have a greater meaning than that which 
I have now brought out. It is not the hope of bless- 
edness in the far future so much as the possession 
of it where we now are, right in the midst of sorrow, 
struggle, and tumult, that the text offers us. If we 
have in us the life of God, that life which comes 
through union to Christ, our evening time in which it 
shall be light is the present darkness through which 
we are passing. There is no waiting for the storm to 
pass over, but in the midst of it we are as calm as 
the ocean depths beneath the stormy waves, we are 
as radiant as the sun smiling above the clouds. The 
" evening time " of which the prophet speaks is not 
that which comes before, but that which comes after 
the going down of the sun ; it is not a bright, calm 
evening at the close of a stormy day, but a gloomy 
night following a day which has been calm and sunny. 
You who are not in the midst of trouble and difficulty, 
who are in health and prosperity, but who, knowing 
the common lot, anticipate trials in store for you, need 
have no dread of those trials. They may shut down 
upon you in blackness and tempest, but the life of 
God in your soul will make the night light about you. 
You need not fear the time of adversity, however sure 



202 SERMONS. 

you may be that it is coming, or however near it may 
be. The darkness and the light are both alike to 
Him with whom you are walking. Let the evening- 
time come ! it shall only prove that you live and 
move in God. Let it come ! for you there is no dark- 
ness, no storm or gloom, even though it be the even- 
ing time. Your whole body is filled with that life 
which is the light of men. It is all one to you 
whether darkness or sunshine rests on the face of the 
earth about you. You have no need of the sun to 
shine upon you, or the moon to give you light by 
night, for God is your glory and the Lamb doth 
lighten you. Thus does your faith, making you one 
with God and causing you to dwell in heaven, take 
away all power to hurt you, from the evil days to 
come. But you may already be in the midst of the 
evening time, dear friends. Is your bright day over? 
Has your sun suddenly gone down, and are you shut 
in by a night of gloom ? Then it becomes you to ask 
whether the blessed promise of the text is made good 
to you. Is your God one who gives you songs in the 
night ? Do you find yourself upheld while you walk 
in darkness, being stayed on him ? Passing through 
the deep waters, do you find that they do not overflow 
you ? and have you grace and strength for your trial, 
however great it is ? If a hearty yes is your answer 
to one and all of these questions, then it is certain 
that the life of God has entered into and is filling 
your life. There is not power for such an experience 
in our unhelped human nature. If we thus triumpli 
over the sorest present ills, we must do it in the 
strength of God. It is his shadow over us which 
makes us abide in perfect peace. Our peace whi^h 
the world cannot take away, is not a peace which the 



THE IDEAL LIFE. 203 

world gave. God gives it to us by His own blessed 
indwelling, and it is the peace of God which passeth 
understanding. It is the peace which was Christ's, 
and which He gave to His disciples, who were in Him 
as He was in the Father. Do not stand in doubt of 
yourself, dear friend, though you see not this light in 
your evening time as clearly as you would. You are 
compassed about by infirmities. The life of God in 
you must struggle with these. You cannot yet say 
that your night shines about you as your day once did. 
But if you have brightening gleams of this experi- 
ence, if you can say that adversity is not all adver- 
sity, as prosperity was not all prosperity, and that in 
them both you have a sweet fellowship with God 
which is forever independent of all earthly conditions, 
then may you be sure that you are at least beginning 
to receive into your soul the one blessedness which 
can never come to an end, which is all the time grow- 
ing and intensifying within you ; the blessedness 
which is your assurance that God has come down into 
your life, and that he is steadily drawing your life 
more and more up into his. 

But not even yet have we fathomed the meaning 
of our text. We need to look at the first half of 
it as well as the second. Listen ! " It shall be one 
day, which shall be known to the Lord, not day nor 
night." One continuous day is the life of the true 
Christian ; not a day made by the shining of the 
natural sun, and put out when the evening comes ; 
a day which God knows, and of which He is the 
source ; not a natural day, half dazzling sunshine 
and half blinding darkness ; something supernatural, 
unchanging, immortal ; not the garish day nor the 
thick night, but an everlasting light, which has all 



204 SERMONS. 

the good of our natural morning and evening without 
any of the evil. We may call it morning or evening, 
just which we choose, since there is no exact word for 
it ; but it is a morning which does not dazzle, and an 
evening which does not take away the light. It is 
neither morning nor evening, nor such a day as we 
know, but one which God knows, which is within the 
light of setting and of rising suns, and which we find 
as our quickened faith makes us more and more one 
with God. Oh what an hour of peace and rapture 
when this divine day begins to dawn upon the soul ! 
It warms but it does not scorch, it reveals and beau- 
tifies without dazzling, it is both cool and bright, it is 
softly shaded yet ever balmy ; infinitely more than all 
that we love in the four seasons of our year, in our 
gladdest days and most starry nights, is in this one 
day, — the day of God kindling in man, which makes 
man the conscious child of God and the partaker of 
His unchanging blessedness. This was the glorious 
inheritance which the prophet offered to his people. 
Though they scorned it, forsaking their God, yet he 
knew that some should enter upon it, if not sooner at 
least in the end of the world. Oh what a time for 
our longing and bewildered world, when that day of 
the Lord, which is neither day nor night, shall come ! 
when His glory shall fill the earth as the waters fill 
the seas ; when you and I and every other child of 
God shall taste that blessedness which His coming 
into the soul and there abiding alone can give ! This 
meeting with God, to dwell in eternal communion 
with Ilim, is the only point at which our storm-tossed 
humanity can be at rest. This great truth, which 
is the central truth of all real religion, gives their 
wondrous power to the words of Christ, which are 



THE IDEAL LIFE. 205 

sweeter to us the oftener we repeat them : " Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and 
learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart. And 
ye shall find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy 
and my burden is light." There is a place far down 
in the depths of the ocean where its waters are for- 
ever still; there is a point in the realms of aether 
above the air where no wind or cloud ever comes ; 
there are favored spots on the earth where the genial 
temperature hardly varies from age to age. And so 
there is a blessed centre in the life of God which 
He brings to us, where the soul which has found 
that centre knows no changing of lights or shadows, 
but rests forever in the unchanging peace of God. 
Oh that we might find that holy of holies ! More 
than has entered into all our dreams of the nature 
of true blessedness is gathered there. It is the ideal 
climate, where the joys of all other climes blend into 
one ; it is the pearly depth to which no wave ever 
goes down ; it is the ethereal height into which nei- 
ther wind nor cloud can rise. When we have found 
our God, and are dwelling in Him, His own immu- 
tableness will come into us. There will be no more 
variations in our religious life, ecstasies yesterday and 
despondency to-day, now hoping and again doubting, 
light and darkness alternating or making painful 
twilight within us ; no agitations or disturbances, but 
the serene and changeless calm of our God, in whom 
we live and of whose nature we partake. Let the 
outward conditions of our lives be what they may, 
our spirits, which are ourselves, are all the same. 
The day of our prosperity is no bright and deceitful 
day, nor is the night of calamity a season of real 



206 SERMONS. 

gloom. Our God is a pillar of cloud by day, and of 
lire by night. Nay, more than that ; He is something 
far other than either day or night ; so that neither 
nor both of these can rise up to the idea of the shad- 
owed brightness in which we live. It is one day, such 
as God forever inhabits ; a divine day which is not 
day nor night ; which cools and softens the noontide 
sun, and makes the evening time light. 

You need not tell me that I am describing an 
experience which no mere man has ever yet had, for 
of that I am thoroughly aware. Nor is this fact any 
reason why we should be cast down in mind, but the 
rather cause for rejoicing. No merely human soul 
has yet been filled with the life of God while in the 
flesh. The experience of which our text speaks is 
before and above us all. It is the ideal experience, 
not yet realized any more than all beauty has been 
in works of art. The Bible has much to say about 
it, holds it out before us as the mark toward which 
we are to press, shows us that the best of men like 
ourselves have come short of it. The friends of 
Job had an idea of this perfect peace, and could up- 
braid Job for his lack of it, but neither he nor they 
had entered into it ; and so I who speak and you who 
listen may be alike destitute of it, even while it fills 
us with a yearning desire. Some of this life and 
peace of God entered into the soul of Abraham. He 
was so nearly one with God that God talked with him 
face to face, and he was called God's friend ; nor did 
even the command to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice 
seem to disturb his inner calm ; yet an earthly current 
mingled with the divine in his soul : he did things 
which God disapproved ; he was not always serene and 
heavenly in mind ; his day was not the one day which 



THE IDEAL LIFE. 207 

is neither day nor night, but a succession of lights and 
shadows much like those through which we are pass- 
ing. The same failure to enter fully into the life of 
God is to be seen in Moses, in Samuel, in David, in 
Isaiah ; in all the Old Testament saints, who saw the 
glory in which God dwelt, but could not come unto it. 
Perhaps of all those of whom we read in our Bibles 
who sought this ideal experience, this perfect union 
with God, the apostle John came nearer than any 
other. I think the words which say that he leaned on 
his Lord's bosom, and was the disciple whom Jesua 
loved, mean more than we sometimes think. There 
was more than the outward and physical fact of re- 
chning on the Master's breast : the very soul of John 
rested on Christ, and found blessed peace in Him. 
Jesus loved him because their two souls flowed to- 
gether, and became one in God. Yet this John, who 
came so near the ideal experience, and who seems in 
his gospel and epistles to sj)eak to us out of the very 
heart of God, was not perfect. He had somewhat of 
the fierce spirit of Elijah, and like him would call 
down fire from heaven on his enemies. Once he, too, 
like the other disciples, forsook his Master and fled. 
Clearly, the day which God knows, which is one blessed 
day, tempering the noontide and making the evening 
light, was not his. He beheld it from afar, and could 
speak of it in rapturous words, but it eluded his out- 
reaching arms ; so that without us he could not be 
made perfect. Near to John, or on the same level, 
stands St. Paul. You read certain passages in his 
writings, and you say, " Surely this man tasted all 
that the indwelling of God can give to any human 
soul." Yes, but he only tasted it, he did not live in 
that and that alone. Though he was caught up into 



208 SERMONS. 

tlie third heaven, passing through an experience more 
blessed than he could tell ; though he was so swallowed 
up in God as not to know whether he was in or out of 
the body ; though he could say that it was Christ for 
him to live, and also to die, so that whether he lived 
or died was a matter of indifference to him ; though 
he could write the 8th of Romans, and the 13th and 
15th of 1st Corinthians, and could say that he was 
ready to be offered, and would thank God if made a 
part of his brethren's sacrifice of faith, — yet he con- 
fessed that he was compassed with infirmities. It is 
doubtful if he ever wholly subdued his naturally im- 
perious temper. This may have been the thorn in the 
flesh, which God did not take away in answer to his 
prayer, the messenger of Satan buffeting him all 
through his life lest he should be too much elated by 
his spiritual attainments. But there was much which 
he did not attain, much which he did not apprehend, 
though apprehended for it in Christ Jesus. He was 
continually forgetting the things behind him, and 
looking forth unto the things before, knowing even 
when he most deeply shared in the fullness of God 
that he was not already perfect. Yes, even the holiest 
of God's servants found their religious experience a 
ladder like that at Bethel, beginning on the earth, 
but reaching away upward and upward, forever up 
into the light in which God dwells. Yet how God 
came down to them along that shining ladder ! How 
He took hold of them, and blessed and inspired them ! 
How He honored them, making them able to speak 
and write the messages of saving love which He would 
send to His sinning children here below ! The expe- 
rience which they yearned for is the same that we 
yearn for, and our feet are on the lower rounds of the 



THE IDEAL LIFE. 209 

ladder along which they have climbed away upward. 
We may follow 'them as they followed Christ, and the 
farther we go the more shall we thank God that we 
are started in an ever-lengthening pathway. The road 
of Christian attainment has for us a beginning, but it 
has no end. " Long enough have ye compassed this 
mountain ; hasten on, the land of promise is still before 
you," is the trumpet call ever arousing us to our life 
of love and duty. Let us bless God for this. Our 
joy consists not in what we have already gained, but 
in the consciousness that we are all the time advan- 
cing. We sometimes wonder what we shall do in the 
long eternity before us. Dear friends, nothing short 
of an eternity can satisfy the most sacred yearning of 
our souls. We yearn for the infmite peace of God, 
but we have not gained it, nor shall we ever gain it ; 
but we shall draw nearer and nearer to it, and the 
consciousness of this progress, of this closer and fuller 
oneness of life with God, will throughout the eternal 
ages be the secret of all our blessedness and joy. We 
shall forever be getting farther into the bright coun- 
try, the sources of whose rivers of pleasure we can 
never reach, hearing sweeter and louder strains of the 
anthems which roll unceasingly, taking in more and 
more of that divine day which is a light at evening 
time and a shadow at the scorching noon. One who 
was known and loved on earth, our blessed Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ, lived out before men the life of 
perfect union with the Father. All the fullness of 
the Godhead dwelt in Him. But He stands alone and 
unapproachable. Only He, of all that have dwelt in 
the flesh, has had that religious experience which is to 
us a far-off ideal. He is in the Father and the Father 
is in Him. The one day, neither day nor night, which 



210 SERMONS. 

God knows, is also wholly known to Christ. No trou- 
ble or suffering ever took away His peace, but He 
dwelt in the bosom of the Father even while His life- 
blood flowed down the cross. He had meat to eat 
which the world knew not of. In His deepest agony 
and humiliation He was infinitely blessed. And He, 
dear friends, our one witness that the words of our 
text may come true, was bone of our bone and flesh of 
our flesh. He makes us members of His own body. 
He declares that where He is there shall we be also. 
We shall, through infinite and adorable riches of free 
grace in Him, attain unto the measure of the stature 
of the fullness of Christ. No matter who you are, 
or what you are ; the most worldly and hardened, the 
poorest, the weakest, the abandoned, the corrupted 
and lost, oh, come to this Saviour just as you are, and 
call Him your Lord and God, and begin to keep His 
words ! In Him there shall not fail you anything of 
all that has been spoken by holy men of old. You 
are God's child. His nature dwells in you, making it 
possible that you should enter into communion with 
Him. Let that communion now begin, — the com- 
munion which may cause you some struggles with a 
worldly heart, but which shall bring more and more 
of the peace of God into you, till you shall sink into 
Him as the river sinks into the sea. 



SEEING THE KING IN THE FAR-OFF LAND. 

Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty ; they shall behold the 
land that is very far off. — Isa. xxxiiL 17. 

This is one of a class of passages in tlie Old Testa- 
ment which have been taken up into Ohi'istian expe- 
rience, and made to point forward, in their meaning 
and application, to the most glorious hopes and prom- 
ises of the gospel. Whatever blessed state of things 
in the land of Israel Isaiah may have referred to, we 
refer his words, almost instinctively, to the condition 
and the inheritance of the righteous in heaven. " The 
King in His beauty," whom our eyes shall see, is the 
glorified and reigning Christ, enthroned in the midst 
of the four beasts and the f our-and-twenty elders ; a 
rainbow round about His head, crowned with many 
crowns. His raiment white and glistering. His coun- 
tenance as the sun shining in His strength ; an innu- 
merable company worshiping before Him, and ascrib- 
ing unto Him, with a voice which is as the voice of 
many waters, glory and honor and dominion and 
power and blessing. And " the land that is very far 
off," which every struggling and toiling believer shall 
behold, is, to our quickened faith, the better country, 
even the heavenly ; the land where there shall be nq 
more sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any 
more pain ; where are the tree of life, and the river 
of water of life ; the blessed abode of holiness, joy, 
and peace, in the immediate presence and the love of 



212 SEHMONS. 

God. What we sometimes call " the beatific vision," 
the radiant and enrapturing scene which shall burst 
upon us when we are clothed upon with our house 
from heaven, is, to our yearning souls, the inner mean- 
ing of the words which say, " Thine eyes shall see the 
King in His beauty ; they shall behold the land that 
is very far off." 

There is one revelation of Christ and His heavenly 
glory to us, which takes place at the beginning of our 
discipleship under Him. Of this we have a striking 
instance in the conversion of St. Paul. He called it 
" the heavenly vision," and gloried in the fact that he 
was not disobedient unto it, while he showed to king 
Agrippa how great things God had done for him. 
That vision, in one form or another, and with greater 
or less power, is vouchsafed to every soul in the hour 
of repentance, when, convicted of its sin, it believes 
on the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Besides this manifestation of the exalted Lamb 
of God, which breaks upon us at the outset of the 
new life, sometimes overwhelming us with terror and 
despair, is that constant revelation of His presence 
which we have with us all through our pilgrimage. 
We live, day by day, as seeing Him who is invisible. 
Our conversation is in heaven. We walk by faith, 
and not by sight. The Father and Son come unto us 
and make their abode with us. We understand all 
the time, inwardly and secretly, yet most blessedly, 
what Christ meant when He said, " Lo, I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world." 

We therefore see the King in His beauty, and the 
far-off land is disclosed to us in the hour of our con- 
version ; and that radiant form and country attend us 
in overhanging vision all through our earthly jour- 



SEEING THE KING. 213 

ney ; and at the end of that journey we are brought 
into an enjoyment of Christ's presence and heavenly 
glories, so full and transporting that all the past is 
hardly remembered. The awfulness of the first hour 
of deep repentance is succeeded by the sweet and 
peaceful trust of Christian discipleship ; and this, like 
some umbrageous avenue leading away through dis- 
tant vistas till it is lost in the midst of half-discerned 
fountains and mansions and leafy bowers, reminds us 
that the real blessedness and riches and glory of the 
Christian state are still unseen, — an inheritance not 
yet entered upon, and for which our outreaching hearts 
daily pray and yearn. We are not satisfied, as we one 
day shall be. We hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness, but we shall be filled. We shall be satisfied. 
The vision of the future, when we see as we are seen, 
shall eclipse the past with its infinite splendors. There 
is first the joy that has come down to us, and secondly 
the joy that goes with us through our earthly dis- 
cipline ; but, withdrawing your minds from these, I 
wish to point you, for a little, to that other joy, — the 
last, greatest, and best of all, — of which only the 
" trailing splendors " now fall about us, and which 
beckons us on to that full possession of it into which 
we shall at length enter. What words could possibly 
describe it to us more fitly, dear friends, than those of 
the prophet, in which he says to you, to me, to every 
penitent believer, to each mourning or persecuted or 
tried and tempted child of God, " Thine eyes shall see 
the King in His beauty ; they shall behold the land 
that is very far off " ? 

This delightful land of heaven, where Christ shall 
be revealed in beauty to the beholding soul, is called a 
far-off land, (1) not to teach us that we are separated 



214 SERMONS. 

from it by any great distance of space or time. Such 
teaching would be contrary to all our knowledge of 
this present life. It is a short life, and a very uncer- 
tain life. In this sense of distance, heaven cannot be 
said to be a far-off land to any believer. It may be 
very near ; he may enter into it to-morrow, or even 
sooner. Christ said to the penitent thief, in the mo- 
ment of his first submission, " This day shalt thou be 
with me in Paradise." Whenever there is but a step 
between the true Christian and death, thei*e is but a 
step between him and the bright country whose glori- 
ous King he shall see as soon as he enters it. The 
golden city may be nearer to us than we think, nor do 
we know but that even in this passing hour the time 
of our departure may come. It is as true of believers 
as of unbelievers, that their days are as a shadow, and 
that they spend their years as a tale that is told. Nor 
is the full vision of Christ said to be in a far-off land 
(2) because the work of sanctification in us must ne- 
cessarily be long and tedious. If this were so, there 
must needs be all the time very many imperfect saints 
in heaven. The number of believers who live many 
years here in the flesh, subject to the refining influ- 
ences of divine grace after they have believed, is com- 
paratively few. In the case of the vast majority, the 
purifying work of the Spirit is far from complete in 
them when they go hence to be here no more. We 
must assume, therefore, that a wonderful change takes 
place in them at death, by which they are suddenly 
brought into a perfectly holy state ; else how can it be 
true of heaven that " there shall in no wise enter into 
it anything that defileth, or whatsoever worketh abom- 
ination or loveth a lie " ? And if this transformation 
takes place at death in the case of all, many of whom 



SEEING THE KING. 215 

are as yet but babes in Christ, why may we not believe 
that it is possible even before death, to those whose 
faith is sufficient ? Chi-istian perfection is not some- 
thing which we must necessarily travel towards through 
long years of discipline ; and yet this view, I suspect, 
accords better than the other with what the great mass 
of believers experience. Some of us may have been 
followers of Christ for half a century ; and still we 
are far off, — our infirmities and failures in duty make 
us look forward to complete holiness as a distant land. 
Not here, but somewhere in the coming eternit}^ we 
shall be like our King, and see Him in His beauty, is 
the whisper of our honest hearts. We may be already 
complete in Him, but not in ourselves ; justified, but 
not sanctified ; freed from the condemning power of 
sin, but not yet without sin. The wonderful charm 
of the Pilgrim's Progress for all Christian hearts 
proves that we naturally think of our perfection and 
blessedness as far-off attainments. The way from the 
City of Destruction to the Celestial City is a long and 
toilsome way, beset with dangers, full of fears and 
hopes and errors and deliverances. Even if it need 
not be so, yet so it almost always is. The necessity is 
not in God, nor in the nature of things, but in our- 
selves. The life of Christ, into whom we are grafted, 
does not all at once flow into us in this world, but only 
gradually, till at length we are full of the fruits of the 
Spirit. 

These words of the prophet seem to me to suggest, 
most strikingly, (1) The vast moral contrast between 
earth and heaven ; (2) the wide difference between 
the earthly and the heavenly condition of Christ ; (3) 
the mighty change which we must undergo, before we 
can stand before Him, and see Him as He is. 



216 SERMONS. 

(1) The corruptions in the earth are so many and 
great, and we are so unable to see the steady growth 
of Christ's kingdom, that it is hard for us to belieA^e 
in an earthly paradise.- We at times seriously doubt 
whether the world is to be purified by its own gradual 
improvement, till it becomes a fit abode for Christ, to 
which He may return and dwell in glory among His 
people. In such moods of mind we turn rather to the 
words which declare that the earth and the works 
which are therein shall be destroyed, that it shall pass 
away with a great noise, that the elements which com- 
pose it shall melt and be dissipated by the fervent 
heat. Our heaven is not this planet on which we now 
are, but a far-off land ; it is beyond the moon and the 
stars ; it is a city builded higher than the clouds ; it is 
a peaceful region, prepared of God at the remote cen- 
tre of His universe, into which the confused noise of 
mortal strife cannot reach ; where the fever and fret 
of the selfish life are buried with the forgotten past ; 
within whose veil the shadows of lust, and wicked 
scandal, and human shame never fall. It is not here, 
but there ; not in this land where we now dwell, but 
in the land that is very far off, that this sweet rest 
and experience of a pure and blessed life shall begin. 
Not where cruel passions rage, but where all is peace, 
we shall see our glorious King. 

(2) These words of Isaiah paint to us the present 
exaltation of Christ in contrast with His lowly lot 
among men. Call Him up before your minds as He 
was : His birth in the manger ; His parents hiding Him 
from Herod ; dwelling, till He was thirty years old, in 
the little hill-town of Nazareth ; a carpenter, and the 
son of a carpenter ; without wealth or powerful earthly 
friends ; despised and rejected by his own countrymen ; 



SEEING THE KING. 217 

obliged to find His friends among publicans and out- 
casts ; choosing for His disciples the humble fishermen 
of Galilee ; going about from city to city ; subsisting 
on the fruits wliich grew by the wayside and in the 
fields ; sleeping upon the mountains and in the open 
air ; often without a place where to lay His head ; des- 
titute of a change of raiment ; betrayed, by one whom 
He had honored, to His savage-hearted foes ; treated as 
the worst and meanest of human criminals, in his ar- 
rest, trial, and execution ; forsaken of His friends, and 
left helpless to the rage of the powers of darkness, in 
His extremity. But now that same Jesus, who is both 
Lord and Christ, is exalted at the right hand of God. 
He is a prince and a Saviour. All the angels of God 
worsliip Him. His garments are light and majesty, 
His form and countenance glorious ; His word, going 
out of his mouth, is like a two-edged sword, and He 
holds the stars in His right hand. Now this glorious 
contrast, this transfiguration of the earthly lot of 
Christ into His heavenly condition, is represented to 
us under the figure of the land that is very far off; 
under the figure of the King in His beauty, over 
against the Galilean peasant who bore suffering and 
shame and the bitter cross. We think of it as a dis- 
tant reocion in which the man of sorrows at lensrth 
rejoices ; it cannot be here, but far away, that the 
crown of thorns has blossomed into beauty ; the suf- 
fering Christ came down so low to us, and the reigning 
Christ has gone up so high, above all principalities 
and powers in heavenly places, that no length of time 
is too great, no distance in space too vast, to repre- 
sent the wonderful and glorious change which He has 
undergone. 

(3) The figure of speech used by the prophet, 



218 SERMONS. 

reminds us also of the miglity inward and moral 
change which we all must experience in order that 
we may be ready for the beatific vision. We could 
not endure the sight of Christ amid His heavenly glo- 
ries, while in our evil and sinful state. His presence 
would consume us, as hay, wood, and stubble are con- 
sumed by the fire. Moses could not endure the sight 
of God ; Abraham could not ; again and again a flame 
came out from the Lord, and slew those who ap- 
proached rashly before Him ; the three favorite dis- 
ciples fell on their faces and were sore afraid, when 
Christ was transfigured before them in the mount. 
John in Patmos had a vision of Christ ; yet he could 
not bear the glory, and says that he fell down as one 
dead at his Lord's feet. Now if this moral contrast 
was so great and overwhelming in his case, who was 
an apostle, acting and speaking under the immediate 
guidance of the Holy Ghost, what must it be in our 
case ! We are bundles of imperfections. We have 
but just begun to submit ourselves to the tuition of 
Christ, or are yet only considering whether or not we 
will be His disciples. But our fretful and irascible 
spirit must be replaced by His resigned and peaceful 
spirit. Our selfishness must be changed to love. In- 
stead of doubts and suspicions, we must be full of 
a trustful mind. Murmurings must give way to con- 
tentment in our hearts, censoriousness to charity, cov- 
etousness to benevolence, pride to lowliness, fear of 
the world to brave and open confession of our Re- 
deemer, Such is the transformation which we must 
undergo, and all the fruits of the spirit must be in 
us and abound, in order that there may be a real 
and joyous union of our souls to God. It is a mightv 
transformation, as we see; but it shall take place, 



SEEING THE KING. 219 

by those helps which God has provided, though with 
man it were impossible. When we think of what we 
are, and of what we are to be when we stand before 
Christ, there is a wonderful expressiveness to us in 
the words which speak of Him as dwelling in the land 
that is very far off. We must traverse continents of 
gracious discipline, we must climb over high moun- 
tains of earthliness and sin, we must sail across wide 
oceans of Christian attainment, before we enter into 
that radiant country, and look on the face of its 
beautiful King. His ways are above our ways, and 
His thoughts higher than our thoughts ; even as the 
heavens are higher than the earth. All our hope, poor 
and sinful creatures that we are, of one day being like 
Him, and seeing Him as He is, is in the power of His 
own all-accomplishing love. He can bring a clean 
thing out of the unclean. He can change the image 
of the earthly into the image of the heavenly. He has 
prayed the Father for us, that we might be with Him, 
and behold Him in His glory. That prayer is sure to 
be answered : to be effectual in the case of each fee- 
blest and lowest soul, which yearns to see the King in 
the far-off land. Looking upon His face even now, 
in the exercise of that faith which unites to Him, we 
are daily transfigured into His glorious image by the 
inworking of the Spirit of God. Our transgressions 
are removed from us as far as the east is from the 
west ; the righteousness of Christ, with which we are 
clothed and shod, does not wax old in this wilderness. 
Each day's advance in our journey but marks the prog- 
ress of the spiritual change whereby Christ, who has 
been formed within us, is subduing all things unto 
Himself, and bringing each deepest and most secret 
thought of our hearts into sweet harmony and loving 
obedience under Him. 



220 SERMONS. 

Now, it is in view of this bright and blessed future 
that I wish to encourage every believer in Christ, and 
to exhort every soul to come after Him. (1) It may 
be that some here, after long years of discipleship, 
have been thrown into doubt respecting the glory yet 
to be revealed. Their spiritual life, sympathizing 
with that of the flesh, burns low amid the infirmities 
which gather upon them with age. The vision of 
Christ is faint and dim to them, does not fill them 
with raptures as it once did. I do not deny that 
there has been this waning of joy and hope in their 
Christian experience. I grant the sincerity of their 
feeling that the land in which Christ dwells in beauty 
is very far off. But, dear friends, the promises of 
God are sure. He can change these feeble and de- 
caying bodies into the likeness of his own most glori- 
ous body. He can replace these failing fleshly senses 
with those strong spiritual perceptions which are fully 
able to apprehend the splendors of his person. His 
assurance is positive and emphatic. " Thine eyes 
shall see the King in his beauty ; they shall behold 
the land that is very far off." No decay of mortal 
powers, no weight of years, sorrows, or sicknesses can 
keep you out of the bright inheritance. Wherefore 
comfort one another with these words. Bear with 
holy patience the lot which is upon you, though the 
silver cord be loosed, and the golden bowl broken. 
Your want of a vivid sense of the nearness and love 
of Christ is but that drowsiness which steals upon the 
soul, giving you gentle warning of the sleep which he 
giveth his beloved, — not the sleep which knows no 
waking, as we sometimes say, but out of which you 
shall wake to joys unspeakable, in the dawn of the 
everlasting morning. (2) Let the prospect of the 



SEEING THE KING. 221 

beatific vision also cheer those who are bearing the 
heat and burden of the day in Christ's vineyard. 
You have great trials of your fortitude and patience. 
You are often at your wit's end. It seems to you 
that you labor in vain, and spend your strength for 
naught. The more you love, the less you are loved ; 
and your good is evil spoken of. Oftentimes your 
own hearts betray you, and before you are aware 
you are overtaken in a fault. Thus your life seems 
to be at cross-purposes with itself, and you have no 
comforting assurance that you are helping forward 
the kingdom of Christ, either within or around you. 
But, dear brethren, your reward is certain. Your 
efforts to bring others to Christ, though seemingly 
futile, are precious to God. Your reward is laid up 
for you. " Thine eyes shall see the King in his 
beauty," is the blessed word of God to you, though 
all the world beside should refuse to go with you to 
the far-off land, and behold Him. "If in this life 
only we had hope," said Saint Paul, " we were of all 
men most miserable." But you are not shut up, as 
he was not, to this disturbed and uncertain life. You 
have hope in the life which is beyond life, and that 
hope is full of immortality. Let it be an anchor to 
your soul. Let it keep you from fainting, or turning 
aside, or faltering, or being at all discouraged. It 
entereth into that which is within the veil. There 
Christ sitteth for you, not ignorant of your labor of 
love, — knowing, as no one else knoweth, how you 
have borne, and have had patience, and have labored 
and not fainted. You shall enter that radiant land, 
and look on its beautiful King ; and throughout all 
the way to it you may sing to yourself those grand 
words of the hymn — 



222 SERMONS. 

* * And, oh ! from that bright throne 
I shall look back, and see, 
The path I went, and that alone, 
Was the right path for me. ' ' 

(3) And if there be any here, as there doubtless are 
some, who stand on the threshold of the kingdom, just 
entering it, or considering whether to enter, let me 
exhort you, dear friends, to press forward. Be ear- 
nest, determined, persevering, even violent, in your 
efforts ; for you know that the kingdom of heaven 
sufPereth violence, and the violent take it by force. 
Let no bands of armed men, thronging the doorway 
and brandishing their weapons, keep you from press- 
ing into the beautiful palace, — the Church of Christ, 
whence the voice of singing, from them that are 
clothed in white, issues forth to you. The vision of 
warning, such as came to Saul of Tarsus, has already 
visited you. Be not disobedient to that ; and so this, 
— the vision of the King in his beauty, in the far-off 
land, shall bless your eyes in the day when you awake 
in Christ's likeness. You see it not now, but you 
have an irrepressible yearning for it; and that yearn- 
ing should be to you the proof that it may be yours, 
for God has put no want in the soul which He has not 
provided the means of gratifying. For this reason, 
first of all, you should believe in that vision ; and you 
should believe in it because God has promised it to 
all his faithful children, and because so many believ- 
ers, extending in long succession through the history 
of the Church, have testified to the sweet foretastes of 
it which have visited them in their pilgrimage. They 
have known it in part ; they have seen it through a 
glass darkly, though not face to face. The glass of 
faith has trembled in their hands while they have 



SEEING THE KING. 223 

stood on tlie Delectable Mountains; yet have they 
beheld with their eyes, even they and not another, the 
glittering domes, and lofty towers, and shining forms, 
in the city which lieth four-square, — the city of love, 
whose length and breadth and height are equal. That 
bright land, which is the abode of our exalted King, 
is too far off to be seen from the City of Destruction, 
from the Slough of Despond, from the Wicket Gate. 
But we give you the divine promises, our own experi- 
ence, and the deep longing in your soul, as proof that 
it is a reality ; it hath foundations ; properly speaking, 
it is the only country, for it is spiritual and eter- 
nal, and shall flourish in unchanging freshness when 
the place of our mortal abode has vanished away. 
Enter in through the gate, fearless of any arrows 
which the enemy of souls may shoot at you from be- 
hind the wall. Your knocking for admittance will be 
heard ; and a hand, in which is the print of a nail, 
shall be reached forth to pull you in. Christ will 
offer to you His own easy yoke, His own light burden. 
He will teach you ; and, in the meek and lowly heart 
which you get from Him, you shall even now begin to 
find rest to your soul. But it is only the spring, the 
rivulet, the stream flowing on within its banks, at 
first. The ocean is far away. You shall have fore- 
gleams of the King in His beauty here, but there your 
eyes shall see Him. More love, more faith, more obe- 
dience, shall come into your soul ; and these, daily 
strengthening your spiritual faculties, shall enable 
you more and more to lay hold of the glory of God 
set before you. Not in utter loneliness, nor in grow- 
ing or undiminishing darkness, shall you go forward. 
The consciousness that you are not alone, but God is 
with you, shall little by little spring up in you. The 



224 SERMONS. 

shadows shall grow less as you advance, till they 
disappear, one after another, in the light which is 
brighter than the sun at noonday. You shall go out 
of the fleshly life into the spiritual life, out of worldly- 
mindedness into heavenly-mindedness, out of weakness 
into strength, out of penitence into joy in the Lord. 
Your pilgrimage may be long and tortuous, or it may 
be short and straightforward ; but it is sure to end in 
eternal peace. You shall see the King in His beauty, 
for that which makes Him beautiful has become the 
indwelling life and the very substance of your own 
soul ; your eyes shall behold the land, that it is very 
far off, for you are already a citizen of that country, 
born into it by the new and celestial birth ; and you 
are traveling toward it, with a blessed homesickness 
in your heart, all the days that you are a stranger and 
pilgrim here. 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER ITS OWN 
VINDICATION. 

Wisdom is justified of her children. — Matt. xi. 19. 

It is remarkable how little pains Christ took to jus- 
tify or explain His own conduct. He speaks, in this 
eleventh chapter of Matthew, of His manner of life 
as contrasted with that of John the Baptist. John's 
habits were ascetic, in sympathy with the old dispen- 
sation of law ; Christ entered freely into society with 
men, as became the joyous spirit of the gospel. There 
were some who found fault with the sternness of John, 
and others who complained of the social ways of 
Christ. Christ states the fact, but He does not give 
any reason for it. He simply says, " Wisdom is jus- 
tified of her children." He and John both, that is, 
were serving the same essential cause ; they were 
working out the one great plan of redemption. They 
understood each other, and were fundamentally in 
accord notwithstanding outward differences. Nor was 
this all ; for any other persons, serving the same 
divine cause, would recognize them both as co-workers, 
and rejoice in them. The fact, therefore, that one 
party disliked John, and another party disliked Christ, 
proved that neither of these parties was in hearty 
sympathy with the kingdom of God. If they had 
been the children of wisdom, they would have recog- 
nized wisdom through any drapery of personal pecu- 
liarities or habits, such as made Christ and John to 



226 SERMONS. 

differ. It is not to be expected tliat all Christians will 
be exact copies of their Master in each outward par- 
ticular ; much less that they will agree among them- 
selves always in regard to what may be proper or im- 
proper in the manifold relations of life. Liberty is 
allowed them in these minor matters. Nor need they 
be all the time explaining and defending their habits. 
If they have the spirit of Christ, they will dwell to- 
gether in love, and labor together for the upbuilding 
of His kingdom, not worried by their differences, but 
the rather rejoicing in them. It is not necessary that 
they should come into collision. They need spend no 
time justifying themselves to one another. Each one 
of them sees that it is natural temperament, parent- 
age, education, surroundings, which make them unlike. 
They severally grant the measure of liberty which 
they take. It is their common devotion to the grand 
central interest which makes them one. This devotion 
marks them all out as the children of wisdom ; and 
by virtue of that wisdom they stand justified to each 
other, no more likely to fall into angry disputes than 
are the flowers of the field to quarrel because they do 
not all happen to be of the same color and fragrance. 
Christians conscientiously serving God are sure to be 
justified by other Christians of like zeal and fidelity. 
This vindication is the best any believer can have in 
this world, and it is almost useless for him to seek 
any other. Those who do not see that he is a child 
of wisdom, can hardly be made to see that He is. 
We waste breath, and time, and strength, in trying to 
make ourselves understood by those who are deter- 
mined to misunderstand us. We should save what we 
thus throw away, and use it in our Master's service, 
since we need it all in finishing the work He has given 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 227 

us to do. Such seems to be the explanation of Christ's 
own silence on all those occasions when crafty men 
came to Him asking- Him why He did thus or thus, 
and He refused to tell them. Infinite though He was 
in resources, He yet had no strength to be wasted in 
convincing the foolish. Though brayed in a mortar, 
their folly would not depart from them. What 
behooved Him was to reveal Himself as the eternal 
wisdom by working out for men a spiritual redemp- 
tion, which work none of the wise would fail to see, 
and approve, and rejoice in. " So live that others, 
seeing your good works, shall be led to glorify your 
heavenly Father." " So live " is the injunction. Not 
so explain, or defend, or seek to justify your lives, 
that others about you shall approve your cause ; if 
they criticise, or complain, or assault you, stand not 
on the defensive, but live on, still, the life which is by 
the faith of the Son of God, and that holy living will 
sooner or later convince as man}- as by any means can 
be persuaded. Such was Christ's way of meeting op- 
position ; and He recommends it to all His followers ; 
and the whole eighteen hundred years of His kingdom 
have shown that this is the only weapon with which 
we can effectually beat down opposers of the truth. 
Men have learned with what profound insight Christ 
spoke these words. The only sure way of putting 
down slander, misrepresentation, evil prejudice, is to 
live it down. No amount of statements and explana- 
tions, spread out before the public, have any weight 
at all in themselves. They are believed, only as the 
man who makes them has proved that he is worthy to 
be believed, by a steady course of conduct. The per- 
son who " rises to explain," either thereby shows him- 
self in the wrong, or unnecessarily anxious. We begin 



228 SERMONS. 

to suspect him as his apologies multiply. On the 
contrary, if he is silent, and goes on quietly attending 
to his duties, our confidence in him increases. Noth- 
ing else so vindicates a man as his own serene silence, 
while he is able to show, in connection with that 
silence, a blameless and useful life. Abuse, hurled at 
such a one, only returns to plague its inventors. 

The Christian, therefore, who hears the buzz of 
scandal rising about him, while he is faithfully follow- 
ing his Master, should not stop to deny or answer any 
charge, but keep calmly on ; for his stopping and turn- 
ing aside, instead of mending matters, will be likely 
to make them worse ; he needs no vindication besides 
his silent faithfulness ; wise men ask only for that, nor 
will the world really accept any other. 

We read in the twenty-first chapter of Matthew 
that the chief priests and elders came to Christ, just 
after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, seeking an 
explanation of His conduct. They asked Him by 
what authority He did such things. He replied that 
He would tell them, if they would answer Him a sin- 
gle question : was John the Baptist commissioned of 
God, or by men ? But they dared not answer ; for if 
they said John came from God, it would convict them 
of sin in not believing him ; and if they denied to 
him all divine authority, they feared the people, who 
held John to be a prophet. I have seen this passage 
criticised, in a certain skeptical book, as proving that 
Christ evaded honest questions in a spirit of mere 
banter and artifice. The charge is a fair specimen of 
the many and gross misconstructions on which infidels 
found their objections to the Bible. The question 
which Christ asked was a most pertinent one. It was 
a test question. Its object was to bring out, as it 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 229 

most clearly did, the unfitness of the priests and elders 
to judge either Him or His doings. It showed them 
that they were swayed in their judgment by the fear 
of man. They did not dare say just what they thought 
of John, and were ready to say either one of two 
directly opposite things, as should make most for their 
present ease and safety ; or if they could not do this, 
they would refuse to say anything. The fact that they 
had no honesty, no sincerity, no supreme love of the 
truth, but were willing to change and barter their 
opinions for temporal advantages, was thus made to 
stand glaringly forth. They must have felt in their 
own consciences, after this exposure, that they had no 
right to ask any one to come to them for judgment. 
K Christ had been in doubt of His own authority, it 
would have been vain for Him to ask help at their 
hands. They would not have answered the question 
candidly in view of the evidence, but as their own fear 
or ambition should dictate. The absurdity of their 
proposal was as great as its impudence ; as though 
blind men should ask the artist to let them judge his 
paintings ; as though the merits of a musical perform- 
ance should be decided by one who cannot tell one 
tone from another ; as though it should be left to 
those who are breaking all the laws of the land, to say 
who are good citizens, and who deserving of punish- 
ment. Our Saviour refused to submit His doings 
to any such arbitration ; and the seK-conceited time- 
s-^Tvers were glad to get away from His presence, 
ihey saw how totally unfitted they were to canvass 
the claims of One who was infinitely above their 
worldly expediency ; who was born, and came into the 
world, that He might bear witness to the truth. What 
had wisdom to do either with the approval or the 



230 SERMONS. 

condemnation of those wlio were not tlie children of 
wisdom ? 

It is because of this human imperfection, from 
which the best are not wholly free, that the great les- 
son of charity is urged in the Scriptures. " Judge 
not, that ye be not judged" is the noble precept in 
the Sermon on the Mount. " How wilt thou say to 
thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine 
eye ; and behold, a beam is in thine own eye ? '* 
Christ made the hypocritical priests aware of the 
beam by which their vision was blurred. How beau- 
tiful the spirit of the apostle in his carrying out the 
instructions of our divine Master ! He writes to the 
Corinthians : " But with me it is a very small thing 
that I should be judged of you, or of man's judg- 
ment ; yea, I judge not mine own self." Only as we 
are the children of wisdom, having in us the wis- 
dom which Cometh from above, are we at all fitted 
to judge one another ; and our perfect faith and joy 
in Christ are the best proof we can have that this 
supreme blessing has been imparted to our souls. All 
the glory and beauty of the divine nature come to us 
in Jesus of Nazareth. He was God manifest in the 
flesh. His person reveals to us the loveliness of in- 
finite mercy, the majesty of immutable justice, the 
great mystery of divine forgiveness and grace. All 
that is gentle in human intercourse, all that is pure in 
thought and speech, all the possibilities of tenderness 
to the poor, sympathy with the sorrowing, forbear- 
ance towards wanderers, patience under ill-treatment, 
serene fortitude amid sufferings, loving efforts to 
benefit and bless the outcasts of society, shine out in 
the life of Christ, so as to make any other goodness 
seem tame and worthless. Do you recognize this 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 231 

beauty in Jesus Christ? Do you justify His wis- 
dom? Is He your soul's ideal, which you are daily 
striving to realize ? Would you gladly give all that 
you have, if your great longing to be like Him might 
be filled ? If you might be pure as He is pure ? if 
you might endure the contradiction of sinners as He 
endured it ? if you could turn your other cheek to the 
smiter as He did when smitten? if you could pray 
His wondrous prayer, " Father, forgive them," for 
those seeking your life ? If you have the witness in 
your heart that such is your love, such your longing, 
such your constant and earnest struggle, then happy 
are you. This outgoing of your soul after the holy 
Son of God is that recognition of the divine wisdom 
which proves you to be a child of wisdom. You have 
secured the pearl of great price. No spirits may be 
subject unto you ; your name and power in the world 
may be small, that is ; nevertheless you should rejoice, 
for your name is written in heaven. But, on the other 
hand, if you see no beauty in Christ ; if He is to you 
a root out of dry ground, having neither form nor 
comeliness in your eyes, and your soul does not desire 
Him, does it not follow, by the same necessity as in 
the other case, that heavenly wisdom has no dwelling- 
place in you ? Here we see just what it was that 
Christ meant when He said that He came not to bring 
peace on the earth, but division. He divides men into 
two classes. His holy and blessed person attracts the 
good, but it repels the bad. The wise justify Him, 
but the foolish condemn Him. These, in their succes- 
sion, make two long ranks running down through the 
generations, — one on the right hand and the other on 
the left, between which His throne of judgment is set. 
There is nothing else for which the true ministers of 



232 SERMONS. 

Christ watch with so much solicitude as to see how 
you shall range yourseK in reference to these two 
parties. If you shrink from Christ ; if you find fault 
with His doctrines ; if you doubt His authority ; if 
you are ashamed of His service, it proves that you 
have not the spirit of wisdom dwelling in you. But 
if you forsake all, and follow Him ; if you cleave to 
His glorious person, hide His precepts in your heart, 
and make His life the pattern of yours, it proves that 
the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. Your 
answer, therefore, to the question " What think ye of 
Christ ? " has more to do with the revelation of your 
own character than of His. God is all the time offer- 
ing this test to men ; nor can they escape it ; it judgeth 
every man that cometh into the world. 

It is in view of our imperfections, and the erroneous 
judgments we make, that our minds are pointed on to 
a day when God shall judge the world. " Judge noth- 
ing before the time," said St. Paul; "until the Lord 
come, who both will bring to light the hidden things 
of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of 
the hearts ; and then shall every man have praise of 
God." But this judgment, so necessary owing to our 
present wrong estimates of men, is wholly needless to 
the Judge Himself. He has been dividing between 
the sheep and the goats all along through the world's 
history. This separation is known to Him, though 
concealed from us ; and hence that last great day is 
called, at least in one place, not the judgment itself, 
but the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. 
We are so imperfect as constantly to err from that 
final verdict when we pronounce sentence on our fel- 
low-men. Christ alone, of all who have lived in the 
flesh, is free from our liability to mistake. He could 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 233 

say, "My judgment is just; for I do not mine own 
will, but the will of Him that sent me." Being the 
Son of God, co-equal with Him, dwelling with the 
Father from eternity. He knew all that the Father 
knew. The spirit of holiness and of truth rested on 
Him without measure. His will was in perfect accord 
with the Father's ; their thoughts and purposes were 
ever going forth through the same channels. Hence 
He could anticipate the awards of the last day. He 
could give a sentence concerning every man, which no 
verdict of that day would change or reverse. His 
judgments were prophetic, for He saw the end from 
the beginning ; nor were there any yesterdays or to- 
morrows to Him, but all the circle of human doings 
and destiny lay present in the grasp of His infinite 
mind. 

But besides these judicial acts, by which Christ dis- 
cerns between the righteous and the wicked, are the 
diverse effects upon men of His revelation to them as 
the incarnate love. Those who have His own love in 
them are drawn to His side. If wise themselves, they 
recognize Him as the embodiment of all wisdom. 
Not doing this, they betray their own hearts, which are 
full of a spirit opposite to His. His own sheep hear 
His voice, and they follow Him. Those who fail to 
do this are judged by their own doings, showing that 
He has nothing in them. The child knows its moth- 
er's voice, and runs to her when she lovingly calls. 
Faihng to do this, it is counted an alien. When a 
great magnet is let down among metallic particles, 
those having an affinity for it spring into contact with 
it. When the heavier cords of a harp vibrate, the 
finer strings tremble in unison. So it is when the 
eternal wisdom comes down to us in the likeness of 



234 SERMONS. 

men. All the wise are attracted to Him, and the un- 
wise repelled. Our hearty response to His teachings 
not only justifies Him, but proves that we are the 
children of wisdom. Leaving men, therefore, to make 
up their minds as they should see fit concerning Him, 
He went serenely on His way, doing the will of His 
Father. It was not Him, but themselves, that they 
judged. He need not delay to explain His doings or 
to prove His authority ; all the good would be with 
Him, and if any chose to be against Him, they did so 
at the peril of their own souls. Their opposition to 
Him was nothing, save as it stirred His compassion 
to see the proof of their perverseness. He must work 
while the day lasted, drawing to Himself such as were 
to be saved ; nor would He waste one moment in refut- 
ing objections which could occur only to those blinded 
by sin. The fact that they asked Him such questions 
proved that no effectual answer could be given them. 
It was a new heart that they needed, not clearer 
instruction as to His claims. Knowledge would not 
help their case till they had been born again. 

Thus did Christ leave His life of love unexplained, 
to work its own justification in the hearts of good 
men ; and thus, dear friends, are we to leave ours. 
All our concern should be to be found in Christ ; this 
is that kingdom of God, which if we seek, other things 
needful will follow in their order. We need not spend 
half our strength and time trying to make foolish and 
worldly men comprehend us. They will persist in 
misunderstanding us. We cannot be understood by 
them if we are true to our Lord, since they have not 
the spirit which controls us dwelling in them. AVe 
are not like those Israelites rebuilding the walls of 
Jerusalem, who wrought with one hand and held their 



CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 235 

weapons with the other. We may give our undivided 
strength to the task our Master has set us. No failure 
or harm can come to us while we are thus eno:ao:ed. 
Those who assail us do but put themselves in the way 
of danger. What they deem a judging of us is a 
self-condemnation. They are broken by the rock on 
which they fall, and that same rock, falling upon them, 
grinds them to powder. 

Is it not, therefore, a strong inducement which our 
subject offers to those not yet in Christ's service, 
straightway to become His followers? You think 
His yoke hard, but it is easy. It does not cramp your 
soul ; it unbinds all your nobler powers, and lets them 
go free. It delivers you from that fear of man which 
bringeth a snare. It gives you such assurance of 
union with Christ, and of victory in His name, that 
you are content to go calmly on, doing what you find 
to do, regardless of any censures or doubts which your 
conduct may provoke. Those who oppose you, while 
you are thus in Christ, do not condemn you but them- 
selves. If they were the children of wisdom, they 
would justify that wise obedience to the divine will 
which you steadily show. No true servant of Christ 
can differ from Him more than John did ; yet there 
was in John that essential oneness with Christ which 
was aU the vindication he needed before men. Rarely 
have two disciples differed more in temperament, train- 
ing, opinions, and habits of mind than did Peter and 
Paul. The first ecclesiastical council of which we 
have any notice seems to have been with a view to 
reconciling their differences. They were so unlike as 
to be unable to labor together harmoniously. Yet 
each found his place in the kingdom of Christ ; one 
could go to the Jews, the other to the Gentiles. Thus 



236 SERMONS. 

each was free to preach the gospel in his own way, and 
develop the type of piety most natural to him, while 
neither of them distrusted the fidelity of the other, 
but both alike rejoiced that their peculiarities were 
used of God for the furtherance of the gospel. So 
true is it, that if the Son make us free, we are free 
indeed. Nothing else gives such play and scope to all 
our ideas of real manliness and independence as the 
gospel of Jesus Christ. We can scorn to go apologiz- 
ing through the world, even as Christ did, remember- 
ing that wisdom needs no defense, but is justified of 
her children. No wonder that St. Paul wrote to the 
Galatians to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ 
had made them free. How strange that any should 
hesitate to come after Him who alone has power to 
make them the sons of God ! Would you have the 
germs of your manhood take root in good ground? 
Then make choice of Christ. Are you anxious for the 
fair maturity of your various powers ? Christian dis- 
cipleship is the air and sunlight which shall cause that 
harvest to ripen. Christ is made unto us wisdom ; 
and they that are found in Him, not having on their 
own righteousness, but that which He gives them, are 
the wise — who shall shine as the brightness of the 
firmament and as the stars forever and ever. 



THE LIMITS OF CHRISTIAN LIBERTY. 

But wisdom is justified of her children. — Matt. xi. 19. 

There is an essential character of goodness, and 
simple devotion to the will of God, in all Christians, 
in virtue of which they recognize one another as breth- 
ren whenever they meet, however they may differ on 
subordinate questions. Christ beheld in John the 
Baptist a true prophet of God, and «Tohn beheld in 
Christ the long-promised Messiah. Those who pre- 
tended to be God's servants, but who stumbled at the 
diverse manners of John and Christ, not recognizing 
their unity of spirit in obedience to the divine will, 
showed thereby that they were themselves destitute of 
that spirit : if they had been the children of wisdom, 
they would have justified wisdom. Christian disciple- 
ship does not cramp individuality. It is a spirit rather 
than a form. It leaves each disciple free in his man- 
ner of life, and teaches that the great company of dis- 
ciples, throughout the whole world, mutually recogniz- 
ing themselves as of one mind despite all diversities 
of manner, will dwell together in love. This individ- 
ual freedom, in things external and subordinate, is 
what the apostles call Christian liberty. It was espe- 
cially insisted on by them, as that which Jewish Chris- 
tians should concede to Gentile Christians. The 
former might still practice the Mosaic ritual, if they 
chose to, since their training as a people made it nat- 
ural to them ; but to the latter it was unnatural, con- 



238 SERMONS. 

trary to all their habits and traditions. Why should 
the Jew put his yoke on the Gentile, any more than 
the Gentile his on the Jew ? These matters, in which 
they so widely differed, did not enter into their es- 
sential character as Christians. " We believe," said 
Peter, who spoke for the Jewish party in the church, 
" that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we 
shall be saved, even as they." 

But this Christian liberty, of which the text is so 
suggestive in its connection, has a limit. That limit 
is what the apostles call " the law of Christ." We 
must never break this law in the exercise of our free- 
dom ; and we never shall break it, if we have Christ's 
spirit. The law of Christ may be said to be that 
principle of self-devotion for the good of others which 
actuated Christ, and by which all His conduct was 
regulated as a Redeemer and Saviour. Well may it 
be called His law, for His unselfish life is the first, 
and the only perfect, embodiment of the idea of self- 
consecration to the welfare of other men, of which 
history gives us any account. Many of the names by 
which Christ is known to us — such as the Sacrifice, 
the Atonement, our Sin-offering, the Lamb of God 
slain for us — struggle to express this idea. It is His 
blood by which we are cleansed from all sin. By His 
death we live. He laid down His life for us. He was 
crucified that God might be just and justify him that 
believeth in Jesus. Christ never looked upon His 
own things with a view to taking care of them ; but 
He always looked on the things of another, and freely 
offered up His own for the sake of the othef This 
was the law of His life ; this explains to us the law of 
Christ. In obedience to this law He laid aside the 
forms of divinity. Though equal with God, He took 



LIMITS OF CHRISTIAN LIBERTY. 239 

the likeness of our sinful flesh. He made HimseK of 
no reputation. Being found in fashion as a man, He 
became obedient even unto the death of the cross. 

Now in all this humiliation and sacrifice Christ was 
entirely free. He voluntarily chose to limit His own 
liberty by a supreme regard for the holiness and 
happiness of others. He had a right to live as He 
pleased while in conmiunion with the Father ; but 
that very communion involved the purpose to live not 
unto Himself. God is love. The eneroies of His 
infinite being are all the time flowing out away from 
Himself in efforts to bless the creatures He has made. 
The law of Cln-ist, therefore, grows out of the law by 
which the holy God regulates all His doings ; and in 
placing that law on us, as a rule which we are to 
observe in the enjojTnent of our libert}^, Christ but 
exhorts us to be like our Father in heaven, who makes 
His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, and sends 
His rain on the just and the unjust. As the Father 
sent Him into the world, so hath He sent us into the 
world. He came freely ; and our service is to be 
without constraint in order to be genuine. He chose 
to use the liberty wdiich was His by virtue of His 
di\ane sonship, in those w^ays only w^hich would tend 
to the rescue of lost men and the edification of His 
tempted brethren ; and we, if we be truly His, shall 
be glad to put ourselves under the same law, — deny- 
ing ourselves that others may be helped in the strug- 
gle with sin and temptation. " Bear ye one another's 
burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ," writes Paul 
to the Galatians. The burdens which He has in mind 
are human w^eaknesses and imperfections. Every one 
has more or less of these. We may take note of 
them in our brethren, not in a censorious, but in a 



240 SERMONS. 

kind and sympathetic spirit; may watch over one 
another, not for our halting, but for our edification. 
Wherever we see these "burdens," of whatever sort, 
if we have the spirit of Christ we shall help those 
oppressed by them to bear their infirmity. We shall 
not turn coldly or indifferently away ; we shall not 
persist in a line of practice by which our brother's in- 
firmity, taking advantage of what we do, brings him 
more and more into bondage. We shall obey the law 
of Christ by freely limiting our individual liberty, as 
far as may be needful to shield him from temptation 
or to strengthen him in any efforts he may be mak- 
ing to overcome evil with good. 

I understand the apostle to give an illustration of 
what he means by the law of Christ, when he says : 
" It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor 
anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is of- 
fended, or is made weak." Self-denials, which may 
seem to us not only needless for our own good, but in 
themselves puerile or ridiculous even, may be neces- 
sary to the rescue or protection of some other person ; 
for his sake, therefore, we are to submit to them in 
all joyfulness, even as Christ, for our sake, stooped to 
that which was so far below the dignity of His infinite 
glory and person. Where is our warrant that we are 
the followers of Christ, if we persist in violating this 
law of Christ ? We are free from all those regula- 
tions of men by which they seek to shape our manner 
of life either this way or that ; but in the exercise of 
our freedom we shall, as the Lord's brethren, choose 
to be under that law which says, " Tempt not thy weak 
brother, but help him to bear his infirmity." If we 
refuse thus to let the law of Christ control our Chris- 
tian liberty, then how can we be said to walk chari- 



LIMITS OF CHRISTIAN LIBERTY. 241 

tably toward our brother, and not the rather to put a 
stumbling-block before him for whon) Christ died ? 
Christ washing the feet of His disciples, if viewed 
only from the point of His infinite excellency, seems 
painfully incongruous to our eyes ; but if we consider 
the spirit in which He acted, how sublime the scene ! 
The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but 
to minister. I am among you as one that serveth. If 
I, the Master, have washed your feet, ye ought also to 
wash one another's feet. Not using our liberty for an 
offense unto any, but in all things striving to deliver 
and purify and bless our fellow-men, is a principle so 
essential to the whole spirit of Christianity, that the 
absence of it,- manifested in our daily lives, brings the 
whole character of our discipleship under grave sus- 
picion. By their fruits ye shall know them. If the 
seed of the kingdom has been truly sown in our 
hearts, we shall bear the fruits of the kingdom. 

We cannot excuse ourselves from this law of Christ 
on the ground that our fellow-men have no right to de- 
mand it of us in our practice. Most certainly they have 
no such right. It is every man's duty to make his own 
peace with God, to escape from evil habits and form 
good habits, whatever I may do or neglect to do. Each 
one to whom the gospel is preached is responsible to 
God for his own soul. The question for you to meet 
at the great tribunal will be, not whether everybody 
else was true to you, but whether you have been true 
to yourself. You have no claim upon Christians for 
this obedience to the law of Christ, any more than 
the world had a claim on Christ to die for them that 
He might take away their sins. Your personal re- 
sponsibility is not lessened. There is something for 
you to do in your own behalf, nor must you expect 



242 SERMONS, 

others to accomplish that work. But though the 
tempted and vicious and sinful cannot demand this 
loving service, this denial and sacrifice of self on their 
account, yet we cannot help rendering it. So mighty 
was the love of Christ, that He could not help becom- 
ing a sacrifice for our sins. We may join with Him, 
laying down our lives for others as He did His ; yet 
there will be enough still for others to do ; our sym- 
pathy for them will not of itseK be effectual to their 
salvation ; and we may devote ourselves for their good 
in such ways that they shall not be hindered, but stim- 
ulated to greater diligence in making their calling and 
election sure. It is the spirit of Christ which causes 
us to practice the law of Christ. We live not unto 
ourselves. Wherever we see suffering, temptation, 
weakness, struggle with sin, we go at once to the side 
of the hard-pressed brother ; nor can we resist the 
impulse to take hold with him, and help him turn his 
defeat into victory, — utterly forgetful of our own in- 
dividual rights for the time being, so that our Chris- 
tian liberty finds its most glorious manifestation in 
the crucifying of ourselves for our brother. 

The subordinating of our Christian liberty to the 
law of Christ, as now explained, has in it one tempta- 
tion respecting which we need to be on our guard. 
We are tempted to credit ourselves with a certain 
superior goodness, in comparison with those for whose 
sake we practice self-denial. They are weak ; we are 
strong. We stoop to them, that they may rise to us. 
Our help is needful to them, and we are able to 
afford them help. Such are the reflections which, if 
we indulge them, may beget within us a self-righteous 
spirit. The temptation is to think more highly of 
ourselves than we ought to think. But the duty of 



LIMITS OF CHRISTIAN LIBERTY. 243 

practicing the law of Christ is very clear, nor can we 
excuse ourselves from it on the ground of tliis expos- 
ure to spiritual pride. The performance of any Chris- 
tian duty is beset with temptations. Life itself is a 
season of trial, — a " probation " the Scriptures term 
it. Christ, who practiced this law as no one else ever 
has or can, was meek and lowly of heart. He is 
eternally conscious of His own infinite rectitude. He 
has, from the beginning, known the sins and weak- 
nesses of mankind with a perfect knowledge. All 
the time is He stooping from His own supreme heights 
of goodness to raise men up out of the deep pit of 
iniquity into wliich they have fallen. Yet He is not 
lifted up in His own thoughts, nor made censorious 
and harsh ; neither doth He despise the most abased 
of mortals. We are constrained to fear, therefore, 
that a certain element of hypocrisy must mar our dis- 
cipleship, if we fall into a vain conceit of our superior 
goodness, while we think that we are fulfilling the law 
of Christ. We cannot really begin to fulfill that law, 
but our outward conformity to it is all a delusion, 
unless we have the spirit of Christ. That spirit will 
fill us with meekness ; it will clothe us with humility ; 
so that when we have done all we can do, we shall 
count ourselves unprofitable servants. We shall aU 
the time feel, however great our sacrifices, that the 
vast debt of love which we owe to all men for Christ's 
sake, is still unpaid. We shall abound in the work of 
the Lord, and strive to fill up what is behind of His 
sufferings, fearing lest we should altogether fail of any 
fit token of gratitude to Him who loved us and gave 
Himself for us. But aside from this amazing fact of 
the love of Christ, which kept St. Paul from being 
unduly elated amid his heroic toils and sacrifices for 



244 SERMONS. 

others, we are to remember that, after all, we are not, 
in ourselves considered, superior to those feeble ones 
for whom we deny ourselves. If we differ at all from 
them, it is God who maketh us to differ. Free grace, 
unmerited and unsought by us, has come down into 
our hearts in the power of the spirit, and begotten us 
from the dead to a lively hope in Christ Jesus. It is 
not we that live, but Christ liveth in us ; and the faith 
by which we receive this new life is the gift of God. 
Of ourselves we are nothing. We are of like passions 
with the worst and weakest of those whom we stoop 
to help. " But for the grace of God there goes Kich- 
ard Baxter," in the vilest sinner whom Kichard Bax- 
ter meets. Hence the touching power of the apostolic 
argument, " considering thyself lest thou also be 
tempted." The consciousness of their own fallibility 
will cause those who are spiritual to restore their er- 
ring brother in a spirit of meekness. It is the evil 
tendencies in our lower nature which we are to cru- 
cify for the sake of the brethren. How do we know 
but that we need to crucify those tendencies for our 
own sake? Let him that thinketh he standeth, take 
heed lest he fall. We may be running a risk even in 
those indulgences which we deem innocent. We may 
be nourishing habits which, like a poisonous vine, will 
grow up gradually around us and spread out over our 
higher nature, killing the divine life in us, and bring- 
ing our noblest faculties into the bondage of corrup- 
tion. We cannot tell but that the flesh may ere long 
regain its control of the spirit in us, if we give it any 
occasion. It is better, for ourselves as well as for the 
tempted about us, that we should bring the flesh into 
subjection, and keep it under by obeying the law of 
Christ. 



LIMITS OF CHPdSTIAN LIBERTY. 245 

Having now stated the limits within which Chris- 
tians may innocently differ one from another, even as 
Christ and John differed, let us return to the fact of 
the essential oneness of Christians and consider what 
should be the effect upon them of this. I have already 
stated, incidentally, that they will mutually recognize 
this essential oneness amid all their differences as in- 
dividuals. Passing on, therefore, from this point, let 
us consider how this grand truth of agreement in 
Christ should affect the intercourse of different bodies 
of Cliristians. I believe that the development of the 
church of Christ into various denominations is entirely 
legitimate. The doctrine of world-wide uniformity, 
in externals, is unphilosophical. All the analogies of 
nature are against such a conclusion. She teaches, 
everywhere, that it is by differentiation that devel- 
opment goes forward. Vegetable life unfolds into a 
variety of plants. Sentient life does not work itself 
out through a single type, but appears in the almost 
boundless variety of animal races. It is the church 
which is one. The denominations, which contain the 
church under some human, local, or temporal form, 
may be a thousand or ten thousand. There should be 
as many of them as are needed, in order that men 
of diverse civilizations, of different habits and tastes, 
of varying culture, of disagreeing race-tendencies, of 
unlike education and refinement, may all find a place 
into which they can gather in sympathetic bodies, 
there to express their faith in Christ in such ways and 
forms as are adapted to their present condition. And 
if the members of these different bodies are indeed 
Christians, they will recognize all of like faith not in 
their own body, and will be drawn into fellowship and 
cooperation with them. Being the children of wis- 



246 SERMONS. 

dom, they will justify wisdom, in whatever guise it 
appears. Christ and John belonged severally to the 
two great economies, so unlike, which the Bible de- 
scribes to us. Yet their differences did not keep them 
from recognizing each other as laborers together. 
They would not be rivals. Each did his own work as 
a part of the one comprehensive work which they both 
were to accomplish. Thus, it seems to me, should the 
different bodies of Christians work together always. 
They should admit that their differences, though a 
comfort and convenience to them, are of purely human 
and temporal origin. The essential element of the 
kingdom of Christ not being any or all of these, 
though expressed variously through them, they should 
not be erected into barriers in the way of Christian 
fellowship. Each branch should be ready to recognize 
all the other branches as grafted into the same vine 
with itself ; and there should be that interchange of 
fraternal acts and frequent greetings in the name of 
Christ, and cooperation, absence of unfriendly rivalry, 
and rejoicing of all over the prosperity of each, which 
shall prove to the world that they are one in the midst 
of all their differences. This I believe to be the unity 
for which Christ prayed at the last supper. All the 
denominations may continue as they are, or their num- 
ber may be indefinitely increased, in the Millennium ; 
it is their mutual love, their cooperation, and gladness 
at seeing one another built up, which shall make them 
one, and prove that Christ came forth from the 
Father. 

Another effect of this recognition of discipleship in 
others, by those who themselves have it, is to draw 
these latter into fellowship with the former. This 
remark applies to those, hoping they are in Christ, 



LIMITS OF CHRISTIAN LIBERTY. 247 

who are still outside of the church. Perhaps there 
are some such here to-day. If so, they must see that 
their state of isolation is not natural. It is contrary 
to what they must feel to be the secret drawing of 
their heart. It violates that affinity which faith ever 
has for faith. If there were but two particles of mat- 
ter in the universe, and these as wide as the poles of 
the heavens asunder, they would never rest until they 
had come into contact and union. So with men, whose 
hearts have been renewed by the spirit of God. The 
more conscious they become of the new life in them, 
the deeper is their longing to be builded together with 
others of like precious faith. If there were but one 
band of Christians in all the world, any soul renewed 
by grace, though on the other side of the globe, would 
at once be moved to traverse seas and lands, that it 
might be with them, and share in the tender com- 
munion which they have with their ever-living Head. 
When Paul had passed through his great experience 
of the second birth, he was not content till he became 
a member of the little primitive church. He went up 
to Jerusalem, where he had been a fiery persecutor, 
and essayed to join himself unto the disciples. But 
at first they were afraid of him, and would not receive 
him. Yes, remember, all ye who think yourselves re- 
buffed by the church on trying to enter it ; remember 
that the great apostle to the Gentiles suffered before 
you in precisely that way. But he persevered. The 
spirit of Christ in him would not let him rest till he 
had entered into the fellowship of Christ's body. 
Your desire to be in that fellowship, and your persist- 
ence in carrying out your desire despite all obstacles, 
is one of the sweetest evidences you can have that 
Christ has indeed been formed within you. Nor can 



248 SERMONS. 

this longing for the society of Christians cease when 
once you have formally joined yourself to them. It 
is a fire which nothing can quench. It is a well of 
water springing up into everlasting life. It will cause 
you to be glad with David, if you may dwell forever 
in the Lord's house. It will bring you, not only to 
the sanctuary with ever-willing feet, but to the room 
for social conference and prayer. The exhortation to 
Christians, not to forsake the assembling of themselves 
together, will be to you one of the most delightful of 
the divine coromands. Though there be but two or 
three of them, yet meeting, as they do, under the cove- 
nants and in the name of Christ, Christ is in the midst 
of them, as He has not promised to be with any self- 
isolated disciple; and for His dear sake, if for no 
other reason, — because you wish to be where He is, 
and feel the blessing of His presence in your soul, 
— you will always strive to make one of the little 
company. 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST. 

Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. — 
Romaics viii. 9. 

Theke is something startling in the comprehensive- 
ness of these words. This is the first thing to be 
noticed. No discrimination is shown in favor of those 
who wear the decent covering of a Christian profes- 
sion ; who have on the comely garb of religion, and 
submit themselves to its sacraments and ordinances. 
The langniage is indiscriminately spoken. It has ref- 
erence to those inside, no less than to those outside, of 
Christ's visible kingdom. " Any man," — you, my 
Christian brother, or I, as well as he that has never 
accepted the seals of holy fellowship, we who study 
the Christian Scriptures, who claim to be Christian 
households, who come to the table of Christian com- 
munion, the managers and pillars of the institutions 
of the Gospel. These religious symbols and rites and 
offices make no difference ; but if " any man " of us 
" have not the Spirit of Christ," he is an alien and 
stranger as really as the open blasphemer. We may 
consider therefore, that, for this time at least, all con- 
ventional barriers — of religious name and profession 
— are thrown down. The apostolic test of piety comes 
through all externals; it throws out church-member- 
ship, the altar of consecration, the sacramental cup, 
and baptismal water, — the proprieties of religion, 
which too many trust in, — and, reducing us all to a 



250 SERMONS. 

common level, — tlie level of simple manhood, — it 
declares that none of us are Christ's who have not a 
Christian spirit. But not only are these words com- 
prehensive, they are also fair and reasonable. The rule 
of admeasurement is just, natural, almost inevitable. 
The branches of any tree are full of the same sap 
which flows through its stem ; and so the genuine 
disciple is animated by the spirit of his Master. It 
follows as a matter of course — almost by a natural 
law — if we are Christ's, that we shall come up to the 
standard here presented. Not so much by any effort, 
as by our own sweet and spontaneous will, shall we do 
this. The connection of believers with Him is vital : 
He and they constitute one organism, — compared in 
Scripture to the vine with its branches, and to the 
body with its members. Now we know, in regard to 
these instances, that a single life pervades the entire 
structure. As is the tree, so are the branches. Men 
do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles. 
No one ever thought of disputing that the same life 
which keeps the heart a-beating, gives to the arm its 
flexibility and vigor. These things cannot be other- 
wise. And for the same reason it is almost needless, 
one would think, to declare that Christ's people have 
His Spirit. We say at once, " there is nothing strange 
in that, but only what we should naturally expect 
beforehand." The text is so true that it sounds very 
much like a truism. Of course the followers of 
Christ will follow Christ ; of course if men are Chris- 
tians they are Christians. As you need not tell us that 
a thorn-branch never grew on an apple-tree, and as 
we know without being told that bitter water cannot 
flow from a sweet fountain ; so it is plain enovigh, 
being self-evident and after the analogy of nature, 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST, 251 

that those who have not the Spirit of Christ do not 
belong to Christ. A man would try in vain to per- 
suade us that he is a Frenchman, if he cannot speak 
the French language ; or that he is fond of adventure, 
while he stays carefully at home ; or that he is a stu- 
dent of history, if he have no knowledge of what has 
taken place in the world ; or that he is a merchant, if 
he never buys and sells : and in like manner it is im- 
possible for a man to persuade his brother-man that 
he is a Christian, — all his protestations and obser- 
vation of forms passing for nothing, — if he is not 
moved by the soul of Christianity ; if he be destitute 
of tliat spirit, or principle of conduct, which was char- 
acteristic of Christ. We sometimes hear it said of 
Napoleon, that he was the modern Alexander; by 
which is meant that the love of conquest was with 
them both the master-passion. If we should hear a 
man called the American Howard, that would signify 
that John Howard's philanthropic spirit animates him. 
A man is said to be Ciceronian when he writes and 
speaks in the style of Cicero ; Baconian, if he adopts 
Lord Bacon's method of investigating truth : and so 
they are Christians — nor can any others be properly 
thus styled — who show in their lives that disposi- 
tion of which Christ was the first and forever the most 
glorious example. 

The spirit of Christ — that is, the steady and gov- 
erning purpose which He embodied in His life — may 
be uttered in a single word ; it was self-sacrifice. 
Though undoubtedly others, before His day, had been 
moved by this spirit in some faint degree ; yet it 
shows so transcendently in Him that they sink out of 
sight in the comparison, as the stars are obscured by 
the sun at noonday. We say that Luther was the 



252 SERMONS. 

founder of Protestantism, and Wesley of Methodism ; 
and so we say, reverently and in a far nobler sense, 
that Christ was the founder of the school of self- 
sacrifice. 

If, then, you wish to know whether a man is a 
Christian or not, you have only to ascertain whether 
or not he possesses this quality. It is the distinctive 
mark of Christian character, the principle of classi- 
fication, which enables us everywhere to detect God's 
people. A person who is not familiar with the struc- 
ture of plants and flowers is apt to classify them 
according to certain superficial resemblances, such 
as color and fragrance ; but an experienced botanist, 
knowing the true grounds of similarity and difference, 
often makes sad havoc among our hasty generaliza- 
tions, — separating what we had joined together, and 
tracing an essential unity where we saw nothing but 
diversity. So the genuine Christian is not peculiar by 
anything superficial, such as names and ceremonies. 
Where we fancy there is great uniformity, looking 
only on the appearance, Christ might discover real 
and painful differences. We must go through reli- 
gious formalities, — creeds and professions assented 
to with the understanding, all mere seeming, — and 
search the man's life for this quality of self-sacrifice. 
The fact of membership in an evangelical church does 
not make one a Christian, if he be destitute of this 
quality; and whoever possesses it in its true and 
heavenly type is a Christian. " I have other sheep, 
which are not of this fold," is Christ's language to the 
narrow-hearted disciple ; as the terrible words, " Not 
every one that saith unto me 'Lord,' 'Lord,' shall 
enter my kingdom," are what He says to the presump- 
tuous disciple. When John said to Him, " Master, 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST. 253 

we saw one casting out devils in Thy name ; and we 
forbade him, for he folio weth not us," the answer was, 
Forbid him not ; he that is not against us is for us. 
The sheep and goats are very much mingled together 
in this world ; the wheat and tares grow in the same 
field, and often so much alike on the surface that it is 
not safe for us to try to distinguish them ; " But the 
Lord knoweth them that are His." His own Spirit 
— the spirit of self-sacrifice — is the " image and su- 
perscription." He looks through all outward diversi- 
ties, or uniformities, for this secret mark of disciple- 
ship ; which was His own grand peculiarity, as it must 
forever be the one distinguishing element in Christian 
character. 

This self-sacrifice, this mark in the forehead of 
every true believer, has three elements, — the intel- 
lectual, the emotional, the executive ; and if either of 
these elements be wanting in it, it is spurious. (1) The 
intellectual. He who devotes himself must do this for 
some worthy object. There is no merit in throwing 
one's self away. Everything in the history of Christ 
indicates that He, before deciding to offer up His life 
on Calvary, took a calm survey of the circumstances. 
It was not a blind determination : His resolution to 
die was based on a clear understanding of the good 
which that death would accomplish. The recovery of 
the lost children of Adam, opening the prison-doors 
that a captive world might go free, the means for 
purifying the fallen generations of men, — this was the 
great result which the Son of God foresaw that He 
could achieve by giving His life a ransom, and hence 
it became Him not to shrink from the mighty offering. 
We are commanded not to expose ourselves to danger 
and death needlessly. Any superstitious abuse of self 



254 SERMONS, 

— such as the papal fasts and penances, the incurring 
of pain rashly and wantonly — is not pleasing, but 
abhorrent, in the sight of God. There is reason to 
believe that what passes current for self-sacrifice often 
partakes largely of the nature of suicide. He who 
o:ffers up himself truly, looks forward to the conse- 
quences of his offering. He anticipates, after delib- 
erate thought, that his act of self-devotement will 
glorify God and benefit the world. It is the settled 
and intelligent conviction that his suffering will in- 
crease the general welfare, and that that welfare wiU 
not be secured without his suffering, which first moves 
him to the sacrifice. Curtius, according to the story, 
leaped into the chasm in the firm persuasion that he 
should thus save the Roman people. Many a common 
soldier has made his name glorious by devoting him- 
seK to save the life of his general. In every such act 
we demand this intellectual element, — the foresight 
of something to be gained which is worthy of the sac- 
rifice. (2) The emotional element. This is essential 
to the genuine spirit of self-sacrifice. There must be 
a real sympathy with the fallen in us, or we shall not 
come down from our high positions to labor amongst 
them. He who has no pity for lost men, who does 
not feel for a world lying in wickedness, can never 
devote himself truly to the work of missions. Cold, 
impassible natures, men or women who can look 
with polite placidity on the unfortunate, need most 
of all to have their hearts developed. Till they learn 
to imagine themselves in the place of the wretched, 
remembering them that are in bonds as bound with 
them, and weeping with them that weep as over a 
common sorrow, the widest knowledge of this poor 
world's wants will not fill them with the spirit of 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST. 255 

Jesus. Only as they feel how" dreadful a thing it is 
to be a sinner, and how sad a thing to be an outcast 
from Chi'istian fellowship, — their souls gushing forth 
in compassion toward the fallen and lonely and help- 
less, full of susceptibility and tearful tenderness, — 
only as they thus feel for and with the miserable may 
we expect to see them overleaping social barriers, 
crucifying even innocent tastes and prejudices, and 
patiently bearing bluntness and insult from the very 
persons they are endeavoring to succor. (3) The 
executive element. Christ not only saw and felt, but 
acted. And we shall act in this matter of seK-sac- 
rifice, if we are really Christian disciples. As the 
perception stirs the emotion, so the emotion must 
move the will, or all goes for nothing. The fig-tree 
was green and covered with leaves ; yet these could 
not save it, inasmuch as it was destitute of fruit, from 
the Saviour's malediction. And so we, though we 
know and sigh over the woes of men, have not the 
spirit of Christ till we are roused to appropriate 
action. Our divine Friend beheld and wept ; yet not 
content with this, He came to suffer in our stead : 
herein was the love, the crowning act and manifes- 
tation of the spirit of self-sacrifice. " Show me thy 
faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith 
by my works," said an apostle. What profit is it, 
though you say unto a brother or sister, "Go your 
way, be warmed and filled," if you withhold the 
needed supply? We may profess great admiration 
for a self-sacrificing spirit, and say that we love it ; 
but let us have a care that our practice does not belie 
our words. If you possess the spirit of Christ, devot- 
ing yourself as He devoted Himself, your desire to 
rescue others from evil will not evaporate in mere pro- 



256 SERMONS. 

fessions. If you cannot suppress tlie fearful thought 
that possibly you are not Christ's, if you would be 
certain that the quality which distinguishes all true 
disciples is yours, be very careful that your pity for 
the wretched does not end in mere sentiment ; have 
that readiness to be offered which moves the will, the 
feet, and the hands in ways of suffering for others ; 
see to it that you can point to your daily walks, — to 
the matter and manner of your life, — in the humble 
certainty that a steady and large benevolence, a 
patient and forbearing love, a brotherly kindness and 
charity — more persevering the more it is misunder- 
stood, abused, and ungratefully thwarted — are mani- 
fest in all your conduct. 

Now this analysis, which brings before us the crite- 
rion of genuine piety, also furnishes a test of certain 
deformities of religious character. That large class 
of persons who are easily affected by descriptions of 
woe and sin, but who still remain inactive and passive, 
are deficient in will ; they have not the executive ele- 
ment of self-sacrifice. The sight of their eyes affects 
their hearts, but does not waken in them the resolu- 
tion to do something. Others again, who are eager 
to devote themselves, but who rush forward blindly, 
not pausing to think whether any good result will flow 
from their sacrifices, show by this conduct that the 
intellectual element is sadly wanting in them. And 
others still — who, though they labor much and wisely 
for the downtrodden, yet do all in so chilling a man- 
ner as to repel even by their charities — have not 
enough of the emotional element. Their good is evil 
spoken of, and almost inefficacious, because not bathed 
in an unaffected and brotherly sympathy. 

The glory of the Christian life, which we have now 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST. 257 

summed up in the one spirit of self-sacrifice, lies in its 
voluntariness. It is without any external constraint, 
purely and forever spontaneous. We come not to the 
altar reluctantly, driven forward at the will of an- 
other, but freely, and with love and longing. The old 
Grecian chief, offering up his beloved child on the eve 
of his departure for Troy ; the citizens of Carthage 
leading forth the three hundred maidens, a propitia- 
tion to the god of war ; Jephthah devoting his daugh- 
ter after the victory over the Ammonites ; Isaac going 
up to the top of Moriah, and permitting himseK to 
be bound and laid on the wood by his father Abra- 
ham, — these offerings do not typify, in all particulars, 
that which is required at our hands. We are to be 
the priest as well as the victim. It is self-sacrifice. 
We not only are the offering, but we render the offer- 
ing. Christ declares that no man took His life from 
Him, but that He laid it down of HimseK. Such is 
the spirit we shall manifest, if we are truly His dis- 
ciples. Our sacrifice may not be the same as His in 
form, but the motive prompting us to it will be the 
same. We are to present our bodies a living sacrifice 
for the same reason that He presented His an atoning 
sacrifice ; that is, that God may be glorified, and lost 
men rescued, through our suffering. It is doubtful if 
you can ever be in the circumstances where this spirit 
will not become you ; and it is the nature of the exi- 
gency that must determine the form of the sacrifice. 
Your sacrifice may be to exercise patience where you 
are in haste respecting a good undertaking ; to labor 
hand-in-hand with brethren toward whom you feel a 
natural antipathy ; to deny yourself the pleasure of an 
angry retort when slighted or insulted ; to conquer a 
personal taste, and put yourself in contact with disagree- 



258 SERMONS. 

able persons for their good and the honor of Christ's 
kingdom. Such as these, my brethren, are our crosses, 
our Calvarys, our Gethsemanes. And as the blessed 
Lord shrank not from His great sacrifice, but took up 
the cross, and bore it away without the gate, and there 
poured out His soul unto death ; so we must cheer- 
fully make these sacrifices of convenience, preference, 
or whatever else we are called to. Otherwise how 
dwelleth the spirit of Christ in us ? what authority or 
comfort have we in calling ourselves His disciples? 
Though this grand trait of the Christian appears most 
striking in those who come down from a lofty posi- 
tion, — in Henry Martyn sacrificing a university life 
for the missionary life, in John Howard going from 
his beautiful home into the prisoner's cell, — surpass- 
ingly and unutterably resplendent in Him who stooped 
from the heavenly glory to the earthly shame, — yet 
none are so weak or lowly but that the same excel- 
lence may shine in their character. If the poor and 
forgotten, — who are never forgotten in the great 
heart of hearts, — if they would have the spirit of 
Christ, and so be His, they must crucify their envy 
and discontent. They must repress the impulse to 
speak against their more fortunate neighbors. The 
disposition to criticise ; the desire to receive more no- 
tice ; the temptation to make harsh remarks, and spread 
injurious rumors, and be shy and suspicious and dis- 
satisfied, — these are the offerings required of not a 
few, which they must bring together and consume on 
the great altar of burnt-sacrifice, or they cannot feel 
sure that they are Christ's disciples. If you think 
only of the rich and educated and refined, and of the 
sacrifice demanded from them for your sake, while 
you read the fearful words of the text, then beware 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST. 259 

lest the judgment - day show that you have not the 
mind of Christ. Those evils and disadvantages at 
which so many fret are the shapes which your crowns 
of thorns and humiliations and crosses take on ; and 
to wear them, and submit and suffer, and toil on cheer- 
fully, in such a way as to show the spirit of Jesus, is 
your portion — often a sublime part — in the carrying 
out of this law of self-sacrifice. 

We are wont to speak disparagingly of self, — its 
very name having a repulsive sound, — as a thing 
wicked and monstrous, which ought by all means to 
be put down and bruised and trodden into the dust. 
It is a relief, therefore, and a pleasure, to find one 
connection in which this miserable thing self may be 
transfigured into something noble and beautiful. It 
does thus appear on the way to the altar. Only pre- 
fix the word seK to the word sacrifice, and straight- 
way there is no grander term in the language. We 
are mean and contemptible till we devote ourselves. 
The mount of offering is the mount of our transfigu- 
ration. The heroes of history — those whom the ages 
never forget — are just those who have obeyed the 
holy law of self-sacrifice. This is the spiritual alchemy 
which wakes death into life ; which changes base- 
ness into honor, mortality into immortality, corruption 
into that which is incorruptible. There is even in us, 
my brethren, something which the angels admire, — 
and which is above price in God's sight, — when we 
go forth willingly bearing our cross. It is the humilia- 
tion which exalts us, the shame which covers us with 
glory, the defeat which is full of victory, the pain and 
suffering which blossom out into everlasting blessed- 
ness. No sooner does God see us on the way to our 
Golgotha than He is drawn to our side. He cometh 



260 SERMONS. 

with His Son to abide near us. The prodigal is 
clothed with garments of beauty. That which was 
before dark and loathsome now beams with a heav- 
enly lustre. The victim, who is at the same time the 
priest, goes to the place of sacrifice crowned with gar- 
lands, and escorted by angels bearing palm-branches. 
Once he tried to save his life, and thus daily he lost 
it ; but now he is willing to lose it, and in losing it he 
finds it. He conquers death in submitting to death. 
He quenches the light of a selfish life in the blood of 
sacrifice, and immediately he reappears in the life of 
holiness, — transformed from the earthly to the heav- 
enly firmament, to shine like a star, and in unclouded 
brightness, forever and ever. 

And oh ! that other joy hinted at in the text ! Not 
only ennobled, but Christ's, — His because we have 
His Spirit : walking in white because we are worthy, 
and, more than all this, walking with Christ; hav- 
ing Him for our companion because we are in loving 
agreement with Him ! His to lead, — His to defend, 
— His to comfort and console, — His to instruct, to 
enrich in all spiritual blessings, to exalt and glorify 
and crown ! This is wonderful riches ! an inheritance 
present and everlasting ! an ocean of blessedness 
which we cannot compass or fathom ! And if the 
glory of belonging to Christ be so unspeakable, who 
shall describe what it is to be " none of His " ? Oh, 
my hearer, — my brother-man, possibly my brother in 
the bonds of church -fellowship, — if you are living 
unto yourself, if you refuse to bear the cross and 
wear the crown of thorns, let them come in such duties 
as they may, then strive to comprehend, so far as you 
can, what it must be to have no portion in Christ. 
"None of His," in the hour and power of adversity; 



THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST. 261 

" none of His," when temptations assail you ; " none 
of His," while your heart is sinking and hope almost 
expires ; " none of His," when you stand with your 
feet in the cold river, looking out on its misty bil- 
lows ; " none of His," in the hour when the throne of 
judgment is set up, and the children of men are gath- 
ered before Him ; " none of His," when He shall say 
to them on the right hand, " Come, ye blessed of my 
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the 
foundation of the world." 



PREACHERS, AND WHAT THEY SHOULD 
PREACH. 

The prophet that hath a dream let him tell a dreamt, and he that 
hath my word let him speak m.j word faithfully. What is the chafif 
to the wheat ? saith the Lord. — Jeb. xxiii. 28. 

I AM glad that I can to-day come before you bring- 
ing you this text out of God's word. It shows you, as 
the whole chapter from which it is taken shows, that 
certain religious features of our times, which are much 
complained of by some, are not peculiar to the present 
age. There were human dreams and theories ming- 
ling themselves with the divine messages, chaif to- 
gether with the wheat, in the days of Jeremiah as 
truly as now. Then and before that time, and ever 
since, as now and hereafter until our Lord's second 
coming, the mental peculiarities of those who formu- 
late and expound and preach the gospel will go along 
together with the gospel itself, mingling more or less 
with it, and at times even claiming that they, rather 
than the words of the Bible which we read, are the 
gospel. But neither now nor in the future, as at no 
time in the past, can this human thinking keep the 
kingdom of God from advancing. The wheat will 
yield its harvest notwithstanding the chaff. God is 
willing that the prophet who dreams should tell his 
dream. Yet it should be kept by itself, as a thing of 
no special value or authority. The grand facts of His 
word, as they stand without note or comment on the 
pages of revelation, are the light and life of men. So 



WHAT PREACHERS SHOULD PREACH. 263 

long as these divine facts are clearly distinguislied. 
from all theorizing, are preached and insisted upon as 
the foundation of our faith and practice, it matters 
little how often we change our theories, or whether 
we have any theories, concerning them. What is 
the chaff to the wheat? The earthen vessel does not 
trouble us while we find the heavenly treasure. Let 
the human speculation be what it may, while we miss 
not the word which proceeds out of the mouth of God. 

Possibly there is a reference in Jeremiah to men who 
knew themselves to be false prophets, who did not be- 
lieve in the prophetic office, who merely made use of 
it to discredit the facts of the divine revelation. If so, 
they would correspond to those in our day who are 
seeking to undermine the whole fabric of the Christian 
religion. We have a plenty who dream and theorize, 
and who tell us their dreams as wonderful inventions 
which have set aside Christianity and taken its place. 
We shall hardly listen to them, however, while they 
are so doubtful about what they say, and so unable to 
agree among themselves, — shall hardly adopt their 
uncertainties which explain nothing, in place of our 
Gospel of the Son of God which goes with a healing 
light into the depths of our consciousness, explaining 
the mysteries of the soul, and meeting and satisfying 
our most sacred desires. 

It is more likely that the dreamers referred to in 
the text were those who really had the prophetic gift 
and believed in it, but who took the messages of God 
and shaped them according to their own views and 
feelings before giving them to the people. They did 
not preach the word of God, that is to say, but simply 
their own commentary upon it or thoughts about it. 
They kept God's light from the people, and gave them 



264 SERMONS. 

the light of their human wisdom in place of it. Now 
that class of persons in ancient times would correspond 
to those in our day who take the Bible and theorize 
about it and frame its truths into logical systems, and 
who then make their theories and systems rather than 
the Bible itself the standard of all Christian belief 
and doctrine. Many of these persons, it should in 
justice to them be said, do not sink the divine fact 
out of sight in the human theory ; they keep the two 
wholly separate in their minds, using the theory among 
themselves and for purely intellectual purposes, but 
coming to the simple and plain fact when they would 
tell men what it is necessary to believe and do in order 
to please God. There are theologians, full of the spirit 
of Christ and His gospel, who would be shocked at the 
idea of preaching their theology as a religious final- 
ity. They feel and admit that their theology must be 
judged by the unvarnished words of Scripture, and 
they preach those words as the foundation of all faith 
and practice. This is the loyal position towards the 
Bible which many theorizers in religion hold, but it is 
by no means held by them all. Men naturally have a 
great affection and esteem for what they have them- 
selves thought out. It is according to human nature 
that the thinking to which one's whole life is devoted 
should get to be to him of all things in the world the 
most important. This is the result of what we call 
professional enthusiasm, without which no signal suc- 
cess is ever achieved. Every young person should feel 
that his daily business in life is an important thing in 
the community, or he will not put his whole energy 
into it. So the author or the poet, having published 
his work after long months of devoted toil, often has 
a regard for it which he is mortified to find the public 



WHAT PREACHERS SHOULD PREACH. 265 

does not share. So the artist, finding no admirers of 
his pictures or statues, takes refuge in misanthropy. 
Such is the tendency of men in whatever they do with 
enthusiasm ; and those who theorize about the teach- 
ings of the Bible have as much of it as any others. 
The speculative systems which they have framed to 
meet intellectual wants, and which are not for our 
spiritual guidance so much as for debate and con- 
troversy, come, aftet years of tliinking, to be very dear 
to them. They mingle their chaff with God's w^heat ; 
hide the wheat in the chaff. The human dream gets 
so mixed with the divine word as at length to usurp 
its place in the thought of the dreamer, and he feels 
that all men who do not speak his shibboleths are 
heretics, and ought to be cast out of the church. Such 
is the very natural origin of much religious persecu- 
tion, of those divisions about so-called doctrinal mat- 
ters which always have and will yet, we know not how 
long, distract the church. These human theories have 
grown so overshadowing at times, and have so w^holly 
usurped the place of the simple gospel, that not a few 
good men have seriously questioned whether the study 
of technical theology be not on the whole an evil. 
Some of the most useful Christians of our times can- 
not be brought to regard theological schools with any 
complacency. I think they are wrong, yet they do not 
speak wholly without cause. They can point to the days 
when there were no such schools, and show that those 
days were among the brightest in the history of the 
church. They can point to men never in such schools 
who are foremost in advancing: our Lord's king^dom. 
They have on their side the fact that many candidates 
for the Christian ministry come out of those schools 
loaded down with theory, which spoils them for any 



266 SERMONS. 

effective service till they get clear of it and learn 
to make the plain words of the Bible their weapons. 
This deliberate and intentional exalting of human 
theory into the place of divine truth is, of course, not 
to be confounded with that unconscious tinge of his 
own personality which every one must give to what he 
utters. Though you and I should teach essentially 
the same thing, yet your teaching will have something 
of you in it, and mine will have something of me in 
it ; and so far as that goes, our teaching will differ. 
I believe lawyers say that no two witnesses ever yet 
testified precisely alike. One sees the same fact dif- 
ferently from another. There is this unconscious and 
necessary variance running all through the Bible. It 
is one of the charms of the volume, and a testimony 
to the simple honesty of the writers. The peculiar- 
ities of authorship in each of the four gospels go to 
prove the genuineness of them all. St. Paul repeatedly 
alludes to this element in his epistles, and intimates 
that at times he may have been too much under its 
influence. He tells his brethren that they are not 
bound by his opinion when he speaks from himself, 
but only so far as he speaks from the Lord Jesus and 
from God. He and James and Peter did not write 
precisely alike upon some of the great themes of the 
gospel. Modern theorists, who are at swords' points 
with one another, have tried to make it appear that 
those apostles were in as sharp conflict as they are. 
But the wish was father to the thought, and they have 
not succeeded in their profane attempt. Very differ- 
ent from the bitter strifes and debates, in which they 
are all the time fiercely anathematizing one another, 
were those unconscious variations of statement by the 
inspired apostles, who cared little for their own refine- 



WHAT PREACHERS SHOULD PREACH. 267 

ments upon the gospel, and gave themselves heart and 
soul to the work of spreading it throughout the world. 
I have now reached a point in my remarks, dear 
friends, at which I can properly say something which 
seems to me very important to be said at the present 
time. I fear that many persons among us are getting 
very wrong impressions in regard to many ministers 
and other teachers of religious truth, and are settling 
down into the conclusion that there is not much real 
and hearty belief of the Bible anywhere. No impres- 
sion could be more false. I believe that the gospel, 
as inspired men gave it, was never more firmly held 
or faithfully preached than now. " But what mean 
these rumors which are filling the air ? " perhaps you 
ask. It is said that many doctrines which the whole 
church has been understood to hold hitherto are now 
in doubt, and that the men who gravely doubt them 
are filling our most prominent Christian pulpits or 
chairs of instruction. Dear friends, I wish to put in 
a word for these co-laborers of mine, and to assure you 
that you have not the least cause to be disturbed about 
the foundations of the truth. " Every little while," 
you say, "some student from the theological school is 
found so loose in doctrinal views that he cannot get a 
license to preach the gospel, or some pastor-elect is 
rejected by an ecclesiastical council, or some one who 
is publicly branded a heretic says he gets a great many 
private letters and words of approval from the very 
party of those who denounce him." There are arti- 
cles in the newspapers, and magazines and reviews, 
which broadly intimate that the writers have had much 
talk with preachers, and that congregations would be 
very much astonished if ministers should come into 
their pulpits and honestly and frankly preach just 



268 SERMONS, 

what and only what they really believe. Now, this 
sweeping charge of hypocrisy, concealment, and deceit 
in the pulpit does strike us at first view as indeed 
formidable. But I do not think, dear friends, that 
you have the least occasion to be made uneasy by it. 
I think it can all exist, and be very easily accounted 
for, and your pastors nevertheless be as true and faith- 
ful preachers of the gospel as the church has ever had. 
I know of no change in regard to the gospel among 
evangelical ministers, except that they love it with a 
more intense devotion, and with a stronger purpose to 
know nothing else, the longer they preach it. If there 
has been any change among them in regard to specula- 
tive or theological teachings, I believe it is largely due 
to this very devotion. They are learning to recoil 
from that whole body of human doctrine which threat- 
ens to displace, and sometimes has displaced, the sav- 
ing words of Christ and His apostles. This is the head 
and front, the beginning and the end, of their offend- 
ing. They do not think as much of theories of the 
gospel and speculations about it as they once did, and 
they are ready to say so either publicly or privately. 
And certainly this is no reason why distrust concern- 
ing them should be sown among you, as though they 
were only a set of hypocrites who for the sake of their 
places and the small stipends they receive are teaching 
you what they no longer believe. They never before 
believed what they teach more fully and earnestly than 
they now do. If they have changed in any of their 
views, that change has not carried them away from 
but nearer to the gospel. They have departed to the 
faith once delivered to the saints, not from it. They 
are thinking more of the divine word and less of the 
human dream; more of the wheat and less of the 



WHAT PREACHERS SHOULD PREACH. 269 

chaff. It has been freely charged, for instance, that 
but few Christian ministers now hold the Scriptural 
doctrine of retribution for sin. But I believe they 
were never more eager to accept just what the Bible 
says on this whole subject, and abide by it, than now. 
It is not the Bible which they refuse to accept, but 
human theories born of philosophy and metaphysics. 
Scholastic thinkers, in ages of fierce religious con- 
troversy, have formulated their own partial and dis- 
torted views of this subject into standards which the 
hard-pressed church has for the time being accepted. 
To refuse to abide by those extravagant human stand- 
ards is a very different thing from refusing to abide 
by the Bible. I think you will all agree with me in 
the statement that such a doctrine of retribution 
should be preached to the wrong-doer as will most 
tend to make him stop his wrong-doing ; that nothing 
should be said to him about his future, either in this 
life or that to come, which will encourage him in his 
evil courses. That statement you are all ready to 
accept ; and it certainly covers everything the Bible 
has to say on the subject, however it may disagree 
with what speculative thinkers and polemics have said. 
Or take the opposite doctrine of grace. It is charged 
that ministers do not hold the doctrine of gratuitous 
salvation, sovereign, foreordained, wrought out in ful- 
fillment of an eternal decree, regardless of merit or 
character in the persons saved. Well, where is any 
such doctrine of grace as that, with no counterbal- 
ancing doctrine, taught in the Bible ? To hesitate to 
accept it is not to go back from Christ, but go back 
to Him. If I should say that every man, however 
good, still needs to be a disciple of Christ, and that 
every man, however bad, is sure to be saved if he f uUy 



270 SERMONS. 

and heartily trusts in a crucified Redeemer, you all 
could admit such a statement ; but that is substantially 
the Bible doctrine of free grace. Admit, as you 
must, that nothing should be said to the sinner to 
encourage him in his sin, and everything to the be- 
liever to encourage him in his believing, and you 
admit the essence of all the Bible has to say on this 
solemn twofold subject of retribution and redemption. 
Now what your acquaintance may be I know not, but 
my own intercourse with Christ's ministers has assured 
me that these two doctrines, or rather this double doc- 
trine, this great truth of truths in the whole Bible, 
was never more firmly held or faithfully preached than 
at present. Thus I might go on through the whole 
list of doctrines which the church of Christ is sup- 
posed to hold. Not one of them, so far as I have 
found, has been given up in its Bible form, at least by 
the ministers of our own religious order and faith. I 
think you will find them all heartily believed and 
faithfully preached, wherever you find religious teach- 
ers who hold that the Bible, the whole Bible and noth- 
ing else, is the life and light of men. And the min- 
isters of to-day, in taking this position, do but place 
themselves where the early New England churches 
stood ; for in their famous Confession of 1680 is this 
golden article : " The supreme judge, by which all con- 
troversies of religion are to be determined, and all 
decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doc- 
trines of men and private spirits are to be examined, 
and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other 
but the Holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit, into 
which Scripture so delivered our faith is finally re- 
solved." No, my dear friends, you who are neglect- 
ing your personal duty on the whole subject of reli- 



WHAT PREACHERS SHOULD PREACH. 271 

gion, you can find nothing among ministers of the 
gospel in our evangelical churches to encourage you 
in such neglect. They do not doubt; they do not 
hesitate ; they are not uncertain. They will all say to 
you, as St. Paul said to the men of his day, " I know 
whom I have believed." If there be any exceptions, 
they are the eccentric, the weak, the hare-brained, 
whose opinion on this subject should have no weight 
with you, as it would have none on any other matter 
of importance. 

Some of the sublimest and most awful truths of 
the Bible are not so much taught in it as taken for 
granted. The existence of God, the immortality of 
the soul, the fact of moral obligation, human sinful- 
ness, and the need of a ransom in order to escape 
punishment for sin, are all truths of natural religion. 
They are written on our hearts. We bring them with 
us into life. We should believe in them though we 
had never heard of Christ and His salvation. The 
conceptions which many tribes have of these truths 
are very vague, owing to long centuries of ignorance 
and superstition and debasing habits of life. But 
though they only slumber in the soul, and fill it with 
frightful or fantastic dreams, they are never wholly 
absent from it. They are " truths which wake to per- 
ish never." Our blessed Lord, and His inspired ser- 
vants both before and after Him, pour a fresh light 
in among these truths. They bring them out of the 
confusion and darkness in our own minds, and set 
them clearly before us in forms which the highest rea- 
son accepts. And not only do they thus deal with 
these grand primal truths which they find already in 
us, but they bring others not in us, — truths more 
wonderful, more majestic, which we do not naturally 



272 SERMONS. 

know, and but for which those which we do know 
would be to us an inheritance of anguish and despair. 
What can be more terrible than to be forced to be- 
lieve in a holy God whom we cannot escape, and with 
whom we are wholly unfitted to commune? What 
more terrible than to know that we are immortal, 
while we feel within us the gnawing of the worm which 
also never dies? What more terrible than to find 
that we are sinners, and be left with no knowledge of 
the forgiveness of sin ? What more terrible than the 
fact of moral obligation, while our conscience is all 
the time telling us that we fail to heed it as we should ? 
You will be ready enough to accept the atoning cross, 
and the washing of regeneration, and the life of God 
in the soul which is by the faith of Jesus Christ, when 
you once find yourself standing face to face with all 
the secrets of your own heart. It is the beliefs which 
you already have which destroy ; it is the truths which 
our Lord Jesus brings which comfort, which give hope, 
which deliver and save. All these truths, both those 
which you have and those which you need, were, I 
assure you, never more generally and fervently held 
than now. Never before as at the present day do men 
go against the deep convictions, not only of the min- 
isters of the gospel, but of all Christendom, who are 
unwilling to come after our glorious Redeemer and be 
His disciples. 

An adequate religious creed, such as all men every- 
where stand in need of, and which should be con- 
stantly preached, I hold to be one which teaches that 
we are by nature the children of God, made such by 
the breathing of His spirit into man at the beginning ; 
which teaches that this divine nature in us has gone 
away from God into bondage to the lower nature, and 



WHAT PREACHERS SHOULD PREACH. 273 

is livinof a life of death in worldliness and sin, where 
it must forever feel the pains of death if it be not 
delivered back into its original life and freedom ; a 
creed which teaches that the cross of Calvary stands 
between the believing sinner and any sense of ill- 
desert which he may have ; which teaches that Jesus 
Christ was very God in such a sense that we need not 
fear to trust our whole spiritual destiny for time and 
eternity in His hands. The adequate creed, the 
blessed, undistorted theology of the Bible, never more 
held and preached than now, teaches that men may, 
by loving and serving their glorified Saviour, have 
spiritual life, and strength and power to live godly 
lives in Him, given unto them ; it teaches that, deny- 
ing worldly lusts, we shoidd live righteously in the 
world ; it teaches that, ceasing any longer to try to 
settle questions which are too high for us, we should 
be holy and harmless, separate from sinners, looking 
for our Lord's glorious coming, and struggling to 
spread His kingdom of peace and joy throughout the 
world. Tliis creed, and the truths and lessons divinely 
connected with it, or which naturally grow out of it, 
is what neither you nor I, dear friends, should ever 
turn away from. It is our sheet-anchor amid the 
rocks and shoals of time. It is the hand of our God 
let doAvn to us, and steadying us forward while we 
trustingly hold to it along the Alpine paths in our 
journey. You know how the Bible speaks of the 
terrors of death. But what, as it also shows, are the 
terrors of death to the terrors of life? Let life be 
shorn of its terrors, and death will have no terrors ; 
it will be an angel of light welcoming us into ever- 
lasting peace. Life throws forward, out of its own 
mystery of evil, that shadow which we misname the 



274 SERMONS. 

night of death. It is terrible to live, to be the child 
of God, to be immortal and full of divine possibilities, 
to walk the narrow and slippery causeway of time, to 
see the hideous faces and forms of temptation rising 
up towards us out of the great deep on either side ; 
to stumble, to slip, to fall is so easy ; it is so easy to 
be startled and affrighted, to make a misstep, to go 
over on one side or the other and be forever swallowed 
up. God forbid, dear friends, that any of us should 
ever be found walking in this demon-thronged path 
alone, or attended only by the devices and specula- 
tions of our fellow-men ! There is but One who can 
guide us aright. There is but One who can hold us 
up. What is the chaff to the wheat ? Believe on the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. 



RELIGIOUS CREEDS. 

Hold fast the form of sound words, whieli thou hast heard of me, 
in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. — 2 Tim. i. 13. 

Do these words refer to a brief summary of Chris- 
tian doctrine which was in existence in the time of 
the apostles? It is very natural to suppose that 
they do. The apostles could hardly succeed in their 
efforts to build up churches without such a summary 
of the doctrines which they taught. What they 
taught was new and strange to their hearers, nor 
could they remain long in person with any of the 
churches which they founded. They were going from 
city to city. In their long absences, having com- 
mitted a church to the care of some wise and prudent 
man styled a bishop or overseer, it is but reason- 
able to presume that they would leave behind them, 
for the guidance of the church and its pastor, a clear 
statement of the truths of the gospel. How else 
could they be sure that the way of salvation in Christ 
would be properly taught ? or that all the churches, 
in various parts of the world, would be essentially one 
in doctrine ? We can hardly avoid the conclusion 
that there was something, in all the churches which 
they gathered, answering to what is now called a 
church creed. And admitting that there was such 
a creed for the use of the church at Ephesus, we 
readily see the reference of the apostle when he ex- 
horts Timothy to " hold fast the form of sound 



276 SERMONS. 

words." Tlie existence of a creed, either written or 
committed to memory, readily accounts for other 
scriptures besides our text. In the First Epistle to 
Timothy, St. Paul denounces a class of teachers who 
" consent not to wholesome words, even the words of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is 
according to godliness. And in the fourth chapter 
of the Second Epistle he rebukes those hearers of the 
gospel who will not endure sound doctrine, but after 
their own lusts heap to themselves teachers, having 
itching ears ; who turn away from the truth, and are 
turned unto fables. How could he refer to heresies 
at Corinth and among the Galatians, or how could 
Peter denounce those who 'bring in " damnable here- 
sies," if there were no fixed standard by which it 
might be known what heresy was ? These are but a 
few of the passages which seem to take for granted 
the existence of such a standard. And though no 
separate creed-form, unmistakably drawn up by the 
apostles, has come down to us, yet there are several 
passages in the epistles which read very much like a 
creed, — brief and clear statements of the great truths 
which Christ and his apostles taught. A creed which 
is simply Christian and not sectarian is one contain- 
ing facts and truths held in common by all Christ's 
followers. Apart from the Bible, which is itself a 
creed in a certain large sense, the nearest approach 
we have to an unsectarian creed is perhaps the Apos- 
tles' Creed, so called, though this is open to objection, 
as I may show further on. Our forefathers here in 
Boston, who drew up the creed still preserved in this 
church, seem to have thought they were following the 
example of the apostles, and even of Christ, in what 
they did ; for they say, in the preface to their work, 



RELIGIOUS CREEDS. 211 

" The Lord Jesus Christ witnessed a good confession 
at the time when he said, To this end was I born, and 
for this cause came I into the world, that I should 
bear witness to the truth. And He taketh notice of it, 
to the high praise and commendation of the church in 
Pergamos, that they held fast His name and had not 
denied His faith.' We. find how ready the apostle 
was to make a confession of his faith, though for that 
hope's sake he was accused and put in chains." 

If asked what the truth was to which Christ wit- 
nessed, we may reply that evidently the great thing 
which He confessed was, that He was the appointed 
Saviour of the world. Nothing could tempt Him to 
deny that He was the Son .of God, and He everywhere 
insisted that there was salvation only for those who 
were His disciples. This was substantially His confes- 
sion in the synagogue, when He read from the prophet 
Isaiah, and said, " To-day is this scripture fulfilled in 
your ears." As John the Baptist denied not, but con- 
fessed, saying, " I am not the Christ," and pointed to 
Christ, saying, " Behold the Lamb of God," so Christ 
Himself confessed, saying, " I am the Way, the Truth 
and the Life ; my Father and I are one ; my Father 
hath sent me into the world, that the world through 
me might be saved ; he that believeth on the Son hath 
everlasting life, but he that beheveth not on the Son 
shall not see life." 

The nearest approach to this confession, which was 
our Lord's faith concerning HimseK, is the declara- 
tion of Peter, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
living God." This creed or confession shows us what 
Christ regarded as the doctrinal basis of His church ; 
for He said to Peter, " Upon this rock will I build my 
church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against 



278 SERMONS. 

it." The confession of Christ as a divine Saviour 
seems to have been the condition, and so far as ap- 
pears ahnost the only condition, of membership in 
His church throughout the apostolic times. The 
Ethiopian whom Phihp baptized said, " I believe that 
Jesus Christ is the Son of God." When the jailer 
at Philippi asked what he should do to be saved, the 
reply was, " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
thou shalt be saved." As a full faith in Christ in- 
volved belief in the fact of His resurrection, this fact 
came gradually to be added. Thus in the tenth of 
Romans, in a passage that reads very much like a 
creed-form, St. Paul says, " If thou shalt confess with 
thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine 
heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt 
be saved." The Jewish portion of the church tried 
for a time to add more or less of their own ritual 
to this confession. But at a general council of the 
church held in Jerusalem it was decided, while they 
were left free to practice their Mosaic rites, that no 
such burden should be laid on the Gentiles. The 
Pauline doctrine of faith in Christ was declared to be 
enough for them, provided they would abstain from 
idolatry and certain other pagan usages. The faith 
or doctrine which the apostles required all Christians 
to accept was sometimes called the mystery. Hence 
we read in one place, " Great is the mystery of godli- 
ness : God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the 
Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, be- 
lieved on in the world, received up into glory." 

These words, in their thought and their structure, 
bear a resemblance to the Apostles' Creed, so called, 
— a confession which has been brought to your notice 
for a few Sabbaths past. Some Christian scholars 



RELIGIOUS CREEDS, 279 

hold that this creed was dra\vii up by the apostles 
themselves, whence its name. But I do not find in it 
this inspired authority, at least in its present form. 
Additions were certainly made to it several centuries 
after the death of the apostles ; and its name is of 
small historical importance, since this might have been 
first given it long after it had begun to be used. But 
it is a remarkably scriptural creed, and remarkably 
comprehensive. Even those phrases in it which some 
of us are now a little slow to accept, recall certain words 
of the Bible. This creed is found, in its earliest forms, 
in the writings of Irenseus and Tertullian, who speak 
of it as a summary of Christian doctrine well known in 
their day. They lived in the next century after the 
apostles, were personally acquainted with those who had 
seen the beloved disciple John ; and it is certain, there- 
fore, that this creed, in its most ancient forms, is more 
than fifteen hundred years old. It was in use among 
the churches before the books of the Bible were gath- 
ered into a single canonical volume. Tertullian and 
Irenaeus do not give it in precisely the same words. 
Its phraseology was changed by different writers. 
But during the fourth century it took the form which 
it now has, with certain exceptions which I wiU note. 
The phrase, " He descended into hell," is not in it ; 
and instead of saying, " I believe in the holy Catholic 
Church, the Communion of Saints," it says simply, " I 
believe in the holy church." It says, "I believe in 
the resurrection of the body," but does not add what 
we now have, "and the life everlasting." This last 
phrase we all no doubt consider a great improvement, 
though, with the others referred to, it was added 
several centuries later. We are glad to say that we 
believe in " the life everlasting ; " and I see not why 



280 SERMONS. 

we should hesitate to say that we believe in " the res- 
urrection of the body." To deny that doctrine is to 
put ourselves against the obvious import of Paul's 
writings on the subject. He declares that Christ, in 
rising from the dead, became the first-fruits of them 
that sleep in Him ; and we are so identified with Him 
that if we say, " our bodies rise not," we deny His 
resurrection. When our minds are troubled by sci- 
entific doubts, or what seem to us natural impossibili- 
ties in the way of this doctrine, let us remember that 
nothing is too hard for God. All is easy in view of 
His omnipotence. We may not know yet just what 
the body is to which Paul refers ; and at any rate we 
can always say to the doubter, as he said to king 
Agrippa, " Why should it be thought a thing incredi- 
ble with you, that God should raise the dead? " 

So also the phrase, " He descended into hell," though 
easily misunderstood, is not unscriptural. The word 
"hell" here does not refer to that place of punish- 
ment which is the abode of the devil and his angels, 
but to the unseen world into which all depart, whether 
good or bad, when they quit the body. It is not a 
place of banishment from God's presence, for the 
Psalmist says, " If I make my bed in hell, thou art 
there." Christ's spirit might be in this common realm 
of all the dead, and yet He might say with literal 
truth to the thief on the cross, " This day shalt thou 
be with me in Paradise." We should never forget, 
when we read such texts as these, that the attribute 
of omnipresence belongs to Christ. The Bible accom- 
modates itself to our finite thought when it speaks of 
Him as descending, or as ascending up into heaven. 
We cannot go from His presence. If Christ himself 
says to God, as represented in the Messianic psalm 



RELIGIOUS CREEDS. 281 

quoted by Peter at the time of Pentecost, " Thou 
wilt not leave my soul in hell ; " and if, in his first 
epistle, he says that Christ, though put to death 
in the flesh, was quickened in spirit, and went and 
preached unto the spirits in prison, we certainly ought 
not to stumble at the words in the creed. Yet I am 
free to say that I wish the words were not there ; for 
we do not always have their scriptural meaning before 
us when we read them, but are misled by certain false 
views which cause them to make a wrong impression. 
Not only did the most ancient form of the creed 
lack this objectionable phrase, but it said, " I believe 
in the holy church," instead of saying, as we now do, 
" the holy Catholic church." There is but one church, 
Christ's mystical body, the whole company of true be- 
lievers in all the world and throughout all time, of 
whatever name. It is indeed the Catholic Church; 
that is, the church of the whole. It is not Papal, it 
is not Episcopal, it is not Presbyterian, it is not Con- 
gregational. It is catholic, the communion of saints, 
the one mighty fellowship in Christ of all those who 
believe on His name. But the word " Catholic " has 
a conventional use, by which it means simply " Papal 
or Romish " to many minds. We are so inclined to 
give in to this false application of the word, thereby 
favoring errors which in our hearts we abhor, that I 
should wish to go back to the ancient form of the 
creed, dropping from it this ambiguous word, if we 
were to have it in permanent use. With these abate- 
ments, the Apostles' Creed is truly a marvelous sum- 
mary of the things most commonly believed among us. 
It is grand in its simple diction, and in the stately 
rhythm of its sentences. It is mellow with the light 
of fifteen centuries. It is a noble confession which 



282 SERMONS. 

every true believer is ready to make, and which we 
all should be glad to know from our earliest years. 

I will not here detain you to speak at length of 
other creeds. You know what the most important of 
them are. There is the Nicene Creed, — sometimes 
called the Athanasian, because it was largely the 
work of Athanasius. This creed was adopted by a 
council of the church at Nicsea, and afterwards con- 
firmed and more particularly defined by a council at 
Constantinople, in the latter part of the fourth cen- 
tury. It continued to be the doctrinal basis of the 
church until the time of Luther. It was aimed against 
the heresy of Arianism, and affirms with special em- 
phasis the doctrine of the Trinity, and the supreme 
divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. The creeds at 
the time of the Reformation, which were elaborated at 
great length, reaffirmed those which had gone before, 
besides uttering strong protests against the errors of 
the Papal church. We know the substance of these 
creeds chiefly through the Westminster Confession, — 
more studied a century ago than now. The Boston 
Confession, which was adopted in 1680, and which is 
the doctrinal basis of this church, may be regarded as 
one of the historic creeds of the Protestant churches. 

It is common in these days to hear a great deal 
said against the use of creeds. But some of you have 
seen during the last fifty years, and we all see about 
us to-day, how swift the descent to religious indiffer- 
ence and to open infidelity is, where positive state- 
ments of Christian doctrine are neglected. 

1. Such creeds are a safeguard against error. 
Having learned them in early childhood, and knowing 
that they contain the substance of the gospel, we are 
not deceived by new forms of error constantly spring- 



RELIGIOUS CREEDS. 283 

ing up around us. Theories claiming to be the gos- 
pel, but really opposed to it, do not mislead our 
minds. As good business men have their familiar 
tests by whicli they detect adulterations and counter- 
feits, so we have, in a Christian creed thoroughly 
learned and faithfully applied, a ready test by which 
we may distinguish all false gospels from the true. 
We know what human doctrines to accept and what 
ones to reject. We can tell the movements in society 
about us which are opposed to Christ, and those 
which are a development of His kingdom. 

2. It is needful to our seK-respect that we hold some 
positive religious belief. Indecision makes a man 
weak, suspicious, untrustworthy. We do not know 
to-day where we shall find him to-morrow. There is 
no class of persons whom we more avoid than what 
are called uncertain persons. No one ever feels quite 
sure of them ; and seeing that they are distrusted by 
others, they cannot wholly trust themselves. Our use 
of that colloquial phrase, " on the fence," shows how 
we forfeit all title to respect by being without clear 
and pronounced beliefs. 

3. A Chi'istian creed, embodying the essential 
truths of the gospel, is all-important for purposes of 
instruction. Go into communities where such creeds 
are unknown, and you find but little clear and definite 
knowledge of religious truth. What you do find is 
fragmentary, superficial, inconsistent with itself. This 
loose and vague way of dealing with Christian doc- 
trine affects all departments of thought. There is 
sure to be intellectual degeneracy where the careful 
training of the young on religious subjects is neg- 
lected. It stimulates the mind to hold a positive 
faith ; to stand pledged to something which we feel 



284 SERMONS. 

bound to defend, whicli obliges us to search tlie Scrip- 
tures, for the universal acceptance of which we toil 
and pray. 

4. But for the germ of all these creeds we must 
come back to the words of Peter, and to the spirit 
of loving trust which filled his heart when he said, 
"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." 
That belief in the blessed Son of God which leads you 
to consecrate yourself to His service is the confession 
of faith which He asks at your hands. Without this, 
any others which you may bring are of no avail. But 
having this, and following the impulses of the Spirit 
in your hearts, you will be led from faith to virtue, 
and from virtue to knowledge, and from knowledge to 
charity ; and all the fruits of godliness shall be in 
you and abound in your lives. 



THE BLESSEDNESS OF LIVING. 

It is not a vain thing- for you, because it is your life. — Deut. xxxii. 47. 

These words announce a truth which our minds are 
unapt to entertain or even recognize ; we love to con- 
template the blessings of life, but seldom consider that 
life itseK is a transcendent blessing. While students 
of nature have bewildered themselves with trying to 
give a scientific definition of life, and the mass of men 
have rega.rded it as a boon or an evil according to its 
allotments, the Scriptures admonish us that it is one 
of the greatest gifts which the " Father of lights " 
bestows on His children. Whether we believe, with 
some, that it is the same thing as electricity ; that it 
does not differ from the principle of heat ; that it is 
nothing more in man than in the inferior creatures : 
whether we vainly attempt to grasp and analyze it, or 
confess, with the wisest of thinkers, that it is a mys- 
tery baffling aU science, — yet he who can say, " I 
have lived," should not pretend that he has no occasion 
for thanksgiving. Simply to exist as a human being ; 
to feel this vitality streaming and flashing through 
one's frame ; to have this power of thought and affec- 
tion, these longings and hopes and heavenly ideals, 
though it be in feebleness, obscurity, and suffering, — • 
are an inheritance not to be despised, but gratefully 
owned and guarded. 

Notwithstanding what stoicism has feigned respect- 
ing the nobleness of suicide, admiring the deaths of 
Cato and Seneca, we feel that there is justice in the 



286 SERMONS. 

instinct wMcli denies to sucli the honors of Christian 
burial. Where reason has succumbed to disease, thus 
rendering the sufferer irresponsible for his actions, no 
feeling of blame can arise in any heart ; but he who 
knowingly undervalues the gift of life, who habit- 
ually despises it, and professes for it a deliberate con- 
tempt, even though he should not toss it back to the 
Giver as a trifle not worth possessing, betrays dullness 
of comprehension no less than an unthankful spirit. 
There are blessings more precious than life, as the 
battlefields of liberty, the scaffolds of Christian dis- 
cipleship, and the cross of salvation may evince ; but 
so far from implying that life is valueless, we assume 
its vast worth and importance by choosing it as the 
final thing to be weighed against freedom, truth, and 
redemption. The sacred writers often depict in a 
very striking manner the shortness and uncertainty 
of life : but all such descriptions, plainly, instead of 
lowering only heighten our ideas of its value ; for 
why admonish us of the loss of that which is of no 
consequence ? Our life on earth may seem a small 
thing in comparison with our immortality, as every 
finite object, however grand, must sink into insigni- 
ficance when placed beside what is unmeasured and 
illimitable. But while reading " Better were it for 
that man if he had not been born," we perceive that 
bare life is classed among the very chiefest of human 
blessings ; and as we listen to Moses in his last 
charge to the Israelites, exhorting them to obedience, 
and saying, " It is not a vain thing for you, because it 
is your life," the simple permission to live, however 
unblessed and unhonored one's life may seem, stands 
towering and shining before us among the choicest 
favors which all-accomplishing Love can bestow. 



THE BLESSEDNESS OF LIVING. 287 

That the bare fact of our existence, whatever its 
limit or allotments, is a boon for which we should 
render our Creator never-ceasing thanks, will appear 
upon due reflection. 

1. Every human life involves a certain royalty and 
dominion. We may lose the consciousness of this 
lordship, and for the most part do, by forgetting the 
divine order of the world. There is a kingly authority 
with which men sometimes invest a fellow, or which 
he may force them to recognize ; and this has so filled 
our thought as to render us careless of the empire 
which God confers. No life is so humble, or so con- 
fined in its operation, but the difference in dignity be- 
tween it and the most illustrious chieftain is too small 
to be computed. That crown bestowed by the impar- 
tial Father upon all, has a brightness which no special 
exaltation can overshadow or bedim. It is the high- 
est glory of a man to make good the possibilities of 
his own nature ; to defend those imperial honors which 
are his birthright ; to comprehend and worthily wear 
the royalty which his very being involves. That sov- 
ereignty on earth which approaches nearest to God's 
is not outward and formal, but in the soul of man. 
It is a necessity, and its ground is in the faculty of 
freewill. Every man is, by virtue of his creation, the 
absolute lord of a kingdom. He cannot vacate that 
dominion, save at his peril, until it is terminated by 
death. It is a trust with which he should allow noth- 
ing to interfere, and which he will be required to ren- 
der back when God calls. 

This empire is partly outward, but for the greater 
part within the man himself. The command to have 
dominion over external nature does not limit our pre- 
rogative : we have other and weightier prescriptive 



288 SERMONS, 

rights. Though unskilled in the management of nat- 
ural forces, though we have never discovered nor 
applied any law of matter, nor achieved aught tend- 
ing to increase man's lordship over the world, yet 
there is a realm in which we may reign supreme. 
What is the world of sense to the world of spirit? 
" What shall a man give in exchange for his soul? " 
One may bid the stars conduct vessels across the sea ; 
another may yoke the steam and the lightning for our 
service ; on every side of us there is a scientific con- 
quest of the outer world going forward, in which we 
may be unable to share, — discoveries and inventions 
to which only the highest human genius is equal : yet 
these triumphs, in which so few can participate, do 
not eclipse the dignity which is common to us all. 
We are not thereby discrowned, for the inner king- 
dom still remains. The host of susceptibilities and 
impulses, the intellectual forces which range through 
two eternities, the high spiritual capacities grasping 
infinity, — these are an empire for the feeblest will, in 
which it may wield undisputed control. " Greater is 
he that ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a 
city," we read; and this is no hyperbole, or flight of 
rhetoric, but a Hteral truth, founded on the intrinsic 
worth and grandeur of the soul. Every one who en- 
joys the life of probation is set over that vast inner 
realm. Though his way outward should be hedged 
up on all sides, and poverty and pain be his bitter lot, 
yet his life is no vain thing. It involves a royalty so 
glorious that the least undervaluing of it, or effort to 
cut it short, is a wickedness and a shame. It is still 
a gift calling for gratitude, — a trust of unspeakable 
meaning, which one should sacredly and reverentially 
hold. 



THE BLESSEDNESS OF LIVING. 289 

Have any of us proved false to this kingdom? 
Does conscience testify that our will has yielded up 
the throne of righteous dominion in the soul ? Are 
our spirits the seat of anarchy and confusion, — the 
will in subjection to lower propensities, floating hither 
and thither on their reckless tide ? This, instead of 
lowering, exalts the blessing of life. It is an oppor- 
tunity to regain our lost dominion. And what nobler 
object can a man propose than to gain a victory over 
himseK ? It is the conflict with indwelling sin, and 
the purpose to conquer every wayward faculty, which 
draws upon us, even from Heaven, looks of admiration 
and love. There is no sublimer thing on earth than 
a soul resolving to bring all its impidses into subjec- 
tion to the law of Christ, saying, " I will recover the 
kingdom which I have lost ; I will reascend the throne 
which my evil nature enticed me to forsake ; appointed 
to rule this immortal spirit and these limitless desires, 
God's greatest work, I will no longer be kept from 
my high vocation. These riotous passions shall be 
controlled ; this uprising selfishness and self-love shall 
be put down ; nor will I ever give over the battle 
while there is one thought or wish left to exalt itself 
against my holy determination." It is for the soul 
thus resolving that Christ was manifested, died, and 
now intercedes. If not a spectacle to men, it is to 
the angels. And the Holy Spirit is with it alway, 
helping and cheering it through the long warfare. 
Who shall say that it is not blessed to live, though 
destitute of all superadded benefits, while thus toiling 
and thus attended, urging our way out of the gulf 
into which sin has cast us, and having our eye fixed 
on the kingdom and crown of a reinstated manhood ? 

2. The opportunities of service which every life in- 



290 SERMONS. 

volves, constitute a weighty trust. Though no fellow- 
man nor any department of nature should be brought 
into subjection to us, and though the consciousness of 
dominion in our own souls should be denied, yet there 
are a thousand ways in which we may be serviceable 
and helpful. To be thus useful is a nobler and more 
Christ-like aim than that just considered. " The Son 
of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minis- 
ter." To aid our brother-men — lightening their bur- 
dens, cheering and supporting them through tempta- 
tion — is the worthiest object in living. It likens 
us to God, who is the servant of all, from archangels 
down to the smallest worm and insect. In doing this 
servants' work it is that our self -con quest and royal 
position are secured. We must reign as God reigns, 
who is the blessed potentate because "His tender 
mercies are over all His works." Our dignity and 
perfection are an incidental residt, a reward given 
little by little while we walk in the footsteps of our 
all-sacrificing Master. None are so weak but some- 
thing weaker appeals to them for protection. It is a 
maxim in political economy, that whoever makes two 
blades of grass grow where but one grew before, is a 
benefactor of mankind. Every foot of surface rescued 
from the encroaching sea, every acre of waste land 
subdued to the plow and the scythe, are a contribu- 
tion to the welfare of the race. Only let each laborer 
perceive how his toil enters into the sum of human 
achievement, and none can say that it is a vain thing 
to live. There is no unproductive class but idlers. 
The riches which vulgar avarice has heaped up will 
in due time be gathered by some wise master, and be- 
come the instrument of virtue and Christian progress. 
" No man liveth unto himself." The Church of the 



THE BLESSEDNESS OF LIVING. 291 

Eedeemer is not in haste, but calmly " bides ber 
time," knowing that the honor and glory of the na- 
tions shall be brought unto her. As sure as there is 
a God, all things have been made for justice ; and 
though men may seek to check or divert them, here 
and there, they move steadily toward their high desti- 
nation. Human acti\dties, whether good or evil, are 
the chariot wheels of Divine Providence; they roll 
the world onward nearer to that perfection and bless- 
edness which await it. 

Wherever our lines of duty have fallen, this truth 
should be the inspiration of our labors; it should 
hush the voice of murmuring. The coral insect toils 
on beneath the waves, all unconscious that it is build- 
ing the fruitful island, or laying the foundation of 
the vast mainland. But it need not be so with us. 
Gifted with that wondrous faculty of reason which 
enables us to trace the future in the present, we may 
know, while buried in the depths of obscurity, that 
our work is a service to mankind ; we may foresee 
every earnest blow and every honest word helping to 
make that new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth 
righteousness. Why despise that life, esteeming it a 
vain or small thing, which is fidl of such far-reaching 
possibilities? What wisdom in the scripture which 
bids us "cast our bread upon the waters," and " sow 
our seed in the morning, and in the evening withhold 
not our hand, since we know not which shall prosper, 
w^hether this or that " ! How inspiring the admoni- 
tion that " God seeth not as man seeth," but hath 
chosen the things which are " weak " and " foolish " 
and " despised " to work out His eternal counsels ! 
Whoever is able to make one more flower grow beside 
the path of goodness, turn a single soul from the ways 



292 SERMONS. 

of vice, or erect a warning beacon on any dangerous 
coast, may yet see the fruit thereof " shake like Leb- 
anon." There are untold ministries of love within 
the power of the feeblest to perform. Your life is of 
priceless value, and should be held and used as a sa- 
cred gift, if it permits you to alleviate any human 
sorrow ; if you can teach young feet to love the paths 
of truth, or cheer onward to duty any shrinking heart ; 
if you can carry a cup of water to the wounded sol- 
dier, or lift up a fallen infant, or gather a simple 
flower for the wasting invalid. Not an empty thing, 
but above all price, your feeble existence, while you 
can return the pressure of a friendly hand, or teach 
one mortal how suffering should be borne, or repay 
kindness with gratitude's inspiring smile. 

3. The poorest human life reveals its unspeakable 
worth when we consider, again, how God weaves it 
into His universal plan. Life everywhere is full of 
wonderful connections and interdependences. There 
is nothing so small but we may say that all things else 
exist for its sake ; and then it is just as true, on the 
other hand, that it liveth not unto itself, but for the 
benefit of the universal whole. The welfare of each 
being is a trust committed to all other beings. It is 
not by becoming his own, but his brother's keeper, 
that every man is to help the order and bliss of the 
world. How beautiful this arrangement, — this law 
of reciprocity pervading rational life ! We are not to 
look on our own things, but on another's ; and to love 
one another is the blessed debt which can never be 
paid. Each ministering to the whole, and the whole 
to each ; you guarding my rights, and I yours ; no 
one caring for himself, but every one for his brethren, 
— such is the law of Christ's kingdom. 



THE BLESSEDNESS OF LIVING. 293 

Nor is this interaction limited to finite life. God 
himself lives for every creature, and every creature 
for God. The redemption in Christ Jesus is for each 
individual soul : " He tasted death for every man." 
For every man, — not the mightiest only, but the 
least and lowest, — the gift of the Holy Ghost, the 
laws of matter and of spirit, the revealed truth, this 
wondrous fabric of world on world, and that nobler 
temple in which God is the glory and the Lamb the 
light. And while it is true that Jehovah exists both 
for all His creatures and for each one, it is just as 
true that they, not only in the mass but individually, 
exist for Him. " He has made all things for Him- 
self," says the scripture. " The invisible things are 
clearly understood from the creation of the world, — 
even His eternal power and godhead." " The heav- 
ens declare His glory." "The earth is full of the 
riches of His goodness." All nature is musical with 
voices proclaiming His infinite perfections. Day unto 
day uttereth forth His faithfulness, and night unto 
night repeateth the story of His wisdom and power. 
And all history and experience — the upheavals of 
empires and every private joy or pain — are the let- 
ters which record His thoughts and ways. He has 
destined nothing for a purposeless existence, but has 
made everything beautiful in its season. Our life — 
though a vapor which appeareth but for a little time, 
and though we often esteem it a vain possession — 
has a part to bear in fulfilling His high purposes. 
He has created us because He had need of us ; He 
knows the niche which each life is to fill, or the con- 
nection it must make in that vast structure which re- 
veals Him, and which completes the measure of His 

joy. 



294 SERMONS. 

We see not the finished picture, but only the back- 
ground, the rough preparatory sketches and the un- 
mixed and scattered colors. But though all is so con- 
fused and unmeaning to us, the Great Artist knows 
just where each item belongs, and how indispensable 
it is to the perfection of His design. That life which 
we are inclined to overlook may be the point on 
which the character of the entire achievement turns, 

— a line which we may never discern, perhaps, but 
which, to God's eye and to the glory of His work, is 
the supreme and final thing. 

The doctrine of the elder theologians, that true 
religion begins in the willingness to lie passively in 
God's hands, does not abase but exalt and glorify our 
humanity. Why should I deem it a humiliation to be 
woven into that web of wisdom at which the angels 
wonder ? Is it not a transcendent honor to be but the 
smallest thread therein ? Your life may seem but the 
veriest trifle. No regenerative force may go out from 
it into society. No man, no law in nature, may do 
obeisance thereto. You may be unable to serve ; even 
your suffering may be curtained with darkness, and 
your struggles for self-conquest uncertain of their 
result, but the hand which sways creation takes you 
up as a very precious thing. God foresees the point 
at which there would be an appalling vacancy in His 
plan but for your little life. You may be the in- 
visible line in the picture, the faint touch of color 
which only the Great Maker Himself discerns ; but 
not the less necessary are you to His mighty purposes, 

— just as indispensable to the completeness of His 
dominions as the loftiest of the worshipers before the 
throne. Your brief existence is embosomed in the 
divine eternity. On His infinite heart you are up- 



THE BLESSEDNESS OF LIVING. 295 

borne. The least of your doings is full of the mean- 
ing of His wondrous counsels. He is behind and 
before you, encompassing your life and pouring the 
mystery of His own being into it, holding it up from 
annihilation and rescuing it from every hazard and 
strait, lest there should be an all-spoiling defect in the 
one vast structure which He is rearing from everlast- 
ing to everlasting. 

4. The poorest life has possibilities and alternatives 
of the most startling character. It is the childhood of 
an endless existence, the seed-time of an infinite har- 
vest, the fountain-head of a bliss or woe immeasura- 
ble. Though it is not possible that any life should 
frustrate God's plan, since our " wrath," equally with 
our obedience, " praiseth " Him, yet it is for this brief 
time on earth to decide whether we shall reap " cor- 
ruption," or "life everlasting," throughojit the long 
eternity. Men sometimes draw back from the scrip- 
tural doctrine of retribution. They deem it unreason- 
able that such fearful awards should follow upon the 
doings of a life so short and feeble. But there is no 
absurdity in the doctrine. It is according to all anal- 
ogy. The temporal destinies of men often hang on a 
moment, — often turn upon the slightest incident. 
The fate of empires and of races has many times 
been dependent on a single battle. Every grown per- 
son, no doubt, can recall the day and the hour in 
which some trifling circumstance fixed the current of 
his activities. And why, then, may not this earthly 
life, thouoh a fleeting shadow, forecast the great here- 
after? Why may it not stamp us with changeless 
characters, and give an impulse which shall fix the 
orbit of our immortality? Utterly insignificant in 
itseK, " vanity of vanities," saith the Preacher, yet it 



296 SERMONS. 

is the point from wMcli two ways are ever open, — 
one into the dismal land which hath no place for re- 
pentance, the other into the midst of the paradise of 
God. Though no to-morrow should be vouchsafed 
you, yet for this day, yea, for this hour and moment, 
you owe infinite thanks, for in it you can choose 
whom you will serve ; from it you may launch your 
soul, either upon a stormy and all-wrecking sea, or 
away upon peaceful waters where no form of evil 
ever comes. 



THEORY AND PRACTICE IN RELIGION. 

Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His 
reproach. — Heb. xiii. 13. 

The theory of religion and its practice should ever 
go hand in hand, as all men admit; but which of 
them shall lead tlie other is not so easy a matter to 
manage. If we study the teachings of Christ and 
his apostles, we shall see, I think, while they by no 
means slight the theory, that the practice is that to 
which they give special emphasis. And I think we 
must also admit that their way of putting the case has 
been exactly reversed many times ; since not a few in 
the church, who affect to be guides and standards, 
have given but little thought to the practice, while 
devoting their whole lives to the theory. Let us look 
a little at this general statement. 

1. First, the disposition to make the theory of reli- 
gion hard and its practice easy. There have always 
been men in the church who represented this tendency. 
Perhaps there were never more of them than at the 
present day. They are men who believe with the 
head more than with the heart. Their aim seems to 
be to put the gospel into a series of abstract state- 
ments, rather than into their lives. They are eager 
to keep the faith of the churches intellectually correct. 
Look at any one of the historic creeds of Christen- 
dom. How much you find in them which is hard to 
be understood, and how little which moves and fires 



298 SERMONS. 

your soul ! The first of them, the Apostles' Creed, is 
comparatively simple, made up almost wholly of bibli- 
cal statements. But those which come later, not ex- 
cepting even the Nicene and Athanasian, are more or 
less the result of controversy. Some Christians ac- 
cepted them, but others could not ; and it is certain 
that many contended for one of them or for another, 
to the sad neglect of personal godliness. Among the 
most earnest champions of some of those hard theo- 
ries of religion were men of loose and irregular lives. 
No one of us pretends to-day that we clearly see the 
meaning of all the statements in those confessions of 
faith. Can we commit a greater sacrilege, or more 
surely go before God with a lie in our hand, than by 
solemnly assenting to we know not what ? Men can- 
not explain to us what they mean ; yet they insist 
that we shall say Amen to their words, or be put 
under their ban. If they could have their way, every 
person who comes into the church would need to be 
an acute and deep thinker, with large stores of knowl- 
edge ; and after getting in, it would not matter so 
much how he lived ; the harder the theory, the easier 
the practice. Think of the labored efforts of men to 
prove the existence of God ! Many of these labored 
arguments we fail to comprehend ; it is not clear that 
the authors themselves understood what they were 
saying. Yet it is natural to all men to believe in 
God ; His voice whispers in our hearts. If any doubt 
His existence, it is because their minds are blinded 
by sin. Let the Holy Spirit take away that veil, and 
they will believe ; but you can never persuade them 
with words which only darken counsel. Your argu- 
ments will be more likely to drive them into doubt 
than lift them out of it. On almost aU the so-caUed 



THEORY AND PRACTICE IN RELIGION. 299 

high themes of religion, a mass of human statements 
has accumulated ; and these are made to block up the 
very entrance to the Christian life. The chief diffi- 
culty of the pastor, in dealing with religious inquirers, 
is to get such statements out of the way. They are 
the rocks and sands at the mouth of the harbor, amid 
which he must pilot the ship on its way. One great 
benefit of a revival is that it lifts men up on a wave 
of feeling out of the reach of theories, as the tide lifts 
the ships above hidden banks on which they would 
otherwise get aground. It is, in one view of it, pain- 
ful to think how many men, whose names are re- 
nowned in church history, have devoted their lives to 
religious theorizing, with little or no concern for the 
spread of rehgion itself among men. We recall their 
names in connection with dogmas, speculations, and 
controversies, not in connection with the real life and 
growth of the church. As the sand of the desert 
blocks up temple-doors, and buries whole cities, in the 
East, so their thinking has dealt with the true city of 
God on earth. We must dig through the rubbish 
they have heaped up, or clamber over it, to get within 
the sacred walls. So great is the mass of intellectual 
theory, which in process of time has grown up on 
nearly every religious question, that those whose only 
care is to save men are more fain to thrust it back- 
ward than forward. However much of it may be 
true, it is not what the inquirer needs. It does not 
open the way into the kingdom of heaven, but blocks 
it up. It may be food to us some time, but certainly 
is not while we are new converts. It may benefit now 
and then an exceptional person, but not the great 
mass of men and women. But a still worse result, 
perhaps, of making the theory of religion so difficult, 



300 SERMONS. 

is that it blinds one to the importance of the practice. 
Practice is always more a matter of will and genuine 
feeling than of intellect. You may reach will by way 
of the intellect, though not if you make this your 
stopping-place. The man of theories does this. He 
is satisfied when the head assents to his teaching, and 
does not go on to emotion and action. Hence the re- 
sult which we so often see, in those who are all the 
time lighting about the standards and confessions, is 
wholly natural. They are so taken up with the theory 
as to forget the practice. They rend the churches 
asunder under the pretense of keeping them pure in 
doctrine. They dream that they are saving Christian- 
ity, when they are only loading it with scandals. That 
in them which alone can make them earnest workers 
for Christ lies wholly neglected. They have no heart 
for evangelism, but the rather deride it. Their pres- 
ence chills the prayer-meeting and the room for reli- 
gious inquiry. We find it hard to say whether how 
much they know, or how little they do, is most remark- 
able. You can hardly detect a shade of difference 
between their life and that of the thoroughly worldly 
man, or, if you do, they are as likely to be below as 
above him. Yet they will fight for the last iota of the 
hardest religious theory, bitterly denouncing all who 
think not as they do, and casting out their name as 
evil. And thus you have that sad incongruity, — the 
utmost vigor of intellectual belief coupled with a life 
which dishonors the gospel. 

2. Now we must just reverse these terms if we 
would go back to Christ and His apostles. They do 
not make the theory hard and the practice easy, but 
the contrary. They give you but little to comprehend 
and a great deal to do. According to them, the theory 



'THEORY AND PRACTICE IN RELIGION. 301 

is easy and the practice hard. The two go haiid-in- 
hand, but practice leads, and theory follows. " If any 
man do His will, he shall know of the doctrine." The 
Bible does not disparage doctrine, nor do I in this 
sermon. But if you look closely, you will see that 
much which it calls doctrine is for the feelings and 
will, more than for the intellect or understanding. 
Yet it does not object even to this, where the Chris- 
tian worker grows naturally into it. Christ did not 
say, " Learn of me, for I understand all knowledge," 
but " Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart." 
His life of gentleness and love, set before us as a pat- 
tern, is what we are first of all to learn. He does not 
wish us to vex our souls with prying into things which 
the angels cannot look on. We shall know only as 
we follow on after His example of meekness and self- 
sacrifice. Let it not trouble us, though we now know 
but in part, is His blessed reassurance to us all. If 
we have true Christian love warming and filling our 
hearts, a day is coming when we shall know as we are 
known. Without this love we should be as sounding 
brass and a tinkling cymbal, though we had all knowl- 
edge and understood all mystery. Thus gentle was 
Christ with all who came to Him. No matter what 
else they lacked, if His spirit was in them. No mat- 
ter how much of other things they could not accept, if 
they would only accept Him. He did not draw to 
Himself those who claimed to know most of the theory, 
but those who were ready for the practice. " Can ye 
drink of my cup, can ye be baptized with my baptism ? " 
was what He said to such as asked for the chief seats 
in His kingdom. The wise and learned rejected Him ; 
but as many as received Him, no matter how simple 
or how ignorant of doctrine, to them gave He power 



S02 SERMONS. 

to become the sons of God. He did not choose doc- 
tors of the law to be His apostles, but fishermen and 
carpenters. His aim as a teacher was not to instruct 
His disciples in regard to theories of religion, but to 
make them pure in heart. If they became temples of 
the Holy Spirit, He would lead them into the truth ; 
would teach them all that thej'' ought to know. He 
did not try to prove the existence of God to any. 
That was taken for granted, as already the faith of 
them all when He said, "Ye believe in God, believe 
also in me." Christ nowhere contended with men for 
religious theories ; all He required of them in His 
appeals was, that they should follow Him. But if the 
theory of religion was made so easy to men by Christ 
and His apostles, the practice was made very hard. 
The perfect Christian life, that is, was painted as a 
great and difficult thing. Christ was thoroughly hon- 
est and outspoken. He did not conceal aught of all 
that is implied in coming after Him. Men might not 
be able to reach the standard ; nevertheless there it 
was, — higher than heaven, broader than the earth. 
They could not afford to waste any energy in theoriz- 
ing, in trying to comprehend mystery ; they needed 
it all for their daily discipleship. The gate to this life 
of practical piety was strait, and its way was narrow. 
Whosoever would be perfect in it must forsake all 
that he had, must hate his own life even, must prefer 
Christ's service to home and kindred. Here is where 
the difficulty of being a Christian came in, as Christ 
Himself saw the case. It is well put in the words of 
our text : " Let us go forth therefore unto Him without 
the camp, bearing His reproach." The " reproach " 
was the cross which Christ bore to the place of His 
crucifixion. He had spoken of the cross to His dis- 



THEORY AND PRACTICE IN RELIGION. 303 

ciples, and of their duty to bear it after Him in the 
course of His ministry. And this metaphor, which 
was no metaphor but a dread reality to Him, can mean 
but one thing. We must be wholly consecrated and 
ready to suffer anything, even as He willingly faced 
the most terrible of deaths, if we would be His perfect 
disciples. When we begin to follow Him, we must take 
up our cross ; we must show our readiness, that is, for 
any self-denial and for any sacrifice, though it be of 
our own life even, which may come in the way of our 
discipleship. He suffered without the camp, in the 
place of guilt and human scorn. And we are to go 
forth to Him into that same place, bearing the cross 
as He did, thus signifying our readiness to be cruci- 
fied. We read that He was made a curse for us, as 
some of the beasts sacrificed in the tabernacle service 
were made a curse for the children of Israel. " The 
bullock for the sin-offering, and the goat for the sin- 
offering," we read in Exodus, " shall one carry forth 
without the camp, and shall burn them in the fire." 
" Wherefore Jesus also," says the apostle, " that He 
might sanctify the people with His own blood, suf- 
fered without the gate." We also read of the scape- 
goat, over which the priest recited the sins of the 
people, and which, with this load of imputed guilt, 
was sent away into the wilderness to perish. Thus 
did the work of Christ appear to John the Baptist 
when he said, "Behold the Lamb of God, which 
taketh away the sin of the world." To be ready for 
such a service and sacrifice as this, is what the perfect 
discipleship requires. What man, who was only a 
man, has ever yet met the requirement ? Perhaps St. 
Paul came near to it when he said that he was ready 
to be offered, or when he declared that he could wish 



804 SERMONS. 

himself accursed from God for his kindred after the 
flesh. It is the martyr spirit rising up within us, 
and controlling the whole man, which Christ requires. 
That it is possible, we know from the case of Stephen, 
of James the Lord's brother, from the history of the 
Colosseum at Rome, from the hymns of victory sung 
in many a consuming flame in more recent times. 
Yet there was a vicarious element in what Christ did, 
making Him more than the martyrs ; and in this He, 
rather than they, is our pattern. Ah, how hard ! It 
may be possible to us some time, dear friends, but 
not now. It is the mark which we have set before us, 
but we have not yet attained. Shall we ever attain ? 
Nay, let us not revolve that question too much, lest we 
be cast down in our minds. But let us look toward 
the mark. Let us not waste any strength on idle 
questions : we need it all for this holy service. When 
we give the proof in our daily lives that we are wholly 
consecrated, it will be time enough for us to try to 
understand the deep things of God. First we will 
apprehend that for which we have been apprehended 
in Christ Jesus ; and then, if we have any desire that 
way, we will turn our minds to those human views of 
truth which now puzzle and confound, and divide and 
distract, so many sections of the Christian world. 

3. And now perhaps you say there is small comfort 
in Christ, since, while He takes away one difficulty. 
He puts another in its place. Nay, dear friends, you 
may make your objection stronger than that ; for if 
Christ puts out of your way all the difficulties of 
theoretical religion, He puts before you the impossibil- 
ity of practical religion. Do not misunderstand me. 
I mean a perfect Christian life, a life wholly like His. 
That I believe to be impossible to me, to you, to every 



THEORY AND PRACTICE IN RELIGION. S05 

man, at tlie beginning. It may hereafter become pos- 
sible, as we grow unto the measure and stature of 
Christ's fullness. 

But in this trouble help comes to us all. The ten- 
derness and gentleness of Christ come to our relief. 
His long-suft'ering and forbearance are our refuge. 
We shall not be afraid to undertake what now seems 
impossible to us, when we forget ourselves and begin 
to feel under us the arm of His almighty love. In 
Christ extremes meet ; that is, He is higher than 
the highest, and at the same time in full sympathy 
with the lowest. He knows our frame better than 
we know it ourselves. He understands, as we never 
shall, how impossible it is that we should at once 
come up to the measure of His devotion. Yet that is 
the goal which He sets far away before us, and which 
He encourages us to hope that we may one day reach 
in the strength which comes to us from Him. It was 
not a new convert who wrote our text, but one who 
had long been growing in conformity to Christ. Yet 
he looked on a perfect discipleship as something for 
him yet to attain. He still pressed toward the mark, 
and looking around on his friends he says, "Let us 
go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bear- 
ing His reproach." Sometimes, when we read the 
words of Christ setting before us the perfect stand- 
ard of duty, we are tempted to say, with the first dis- 
ciples, " Who, then, can be saved ? " But nothing 
can encourage us more than those same words of 
Christ, dear friends, when we see in them, not what 
we must now be, but what we all can become. It is 
no small thing which Christ undertakes to do for us. 
He proposes to work out a mighty change in us, by 
the power of a divine life dwelling in us, which our 



306 SERMONS. 

faith in Him brings into o\vr souls. He will raise us 
up to heights of holiness which now are far out of our 
sight. He wdll change us into His owti image, from 
glory to glory, while we look on His face. He will 
make us perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. 
His life which He gives unto us will gradually pro- 
duce in us that spirit which loves its enemies, which 
does good hoping for nothing, w^hich blesses them that 
curse it, which sells all and gives to the poor ; which 
makes itself a living sacrifice, as ready for the cross 
as Christ was, if it may thereby honor the truth or 
save a soul from death. Nothing should inspire us 
more, dear friends, than the certainty that we may 
reach this high character. It is so sure that Christ 
expects it of us all ! He presents it in the form of a 
command ; and He, too, gives us the strength to obey. 
But while so great things are to be done for us in the 
end, Christ begins by coming down to us just where 
we are. The w^ord is nigh us. We are only to con- 
fess our risen Saviour, and with the heart to believe 
on His name. He does not ask of us w^hat we have 
not, but only what we have. He accepts us for the 
willing mind. When we have done what we could, it 
is enough. He takes our scant service and makes it 
great, as He made the five loaves and two small fishes 
feed the multitude. He even chides us w^hen we are 
discouraged by the poorness of our service. He does 
not quench the smoking flax. He says to the bowed 
and silent penitent, " Go thy way, sin no more." 
When we look on Him and faint at the distance be- 
tw^een His character and ours, He says : " The works 
which I do shall ye do ; and greater works shall ye 
do, because I go to the Father." Nor is He less pa- 
tient and tender when we fall in the way, or stray out 



THEORY AND PRACTICE IN RELIGION. 307 

of it. How kindly He dealt with Peter ! — did not 
cast him off because of the denial, but gently admon- 
ished him, and drew him back into the way of his 
duty. Thus forbearing is Christ toward all His im- 
perfect disciples. They may despise one another, but 
He never despises any. They may be censorious, 
but He is not. He does not give over the erring, but 
chastens them that He may receive them. Though 
we sin against Him seventy times seven, yet He for- 
gives us and loves us still. He does not despair of 
us even when we despair of ourselves ; and though all 
men should be against us. He is for us. We make 
the theory hard and the practice easy, but He makes 
the theory easy and the practice hard. Yet this hard 
practice points to the end more than to the beginning 
of the Christian life. It is not meant to discourage 
but to inspire our hope. It assures us, however faulty 
our obedience may now be, that a day is coming when 
the spirit which was in Christ shall be in us also. 



MANLINESS. 

Show thyself a man. — 1 Kings ii. 2. 

He shows himseK a man who goes about Ids work, 
whatever it may be, m man-fashion. Such an one is 
not listless, but in earnest. He works ; he does not 
dawdle. He brings all his faculties and powers to 
bear on what he is doing ; his devotion is complete, 
not partial. He does not allow his attention to be 
diverted or distracted. He sees his object, and noth- 
ing can break his determination to gain it. He does 
not boast or bluster. He does not look around to see 
who may be applauding or blaming him. He just 
does with his might what his hand finds to do, with 
singleness of eye, with firmness of purpose, with con- 
centration of mind, and with the least noise or dis- 
turbance to others possible. 

There is a lesson for you in nature, if you would 
know what it is for one to do his work in a manful 
way. The sun does not loiter in his daily task. He 
comes forth from his chambers in the east, and rejoices 
as a strong man to run a race. He shines on, though 
clouds and darkness are often about hun. Steadiness, 
earnestness, no resting, one continuous and strong 
march till his journey is done, are in the example he 
sets you. The earth, turning on its axis and rolling 
through its orbit, also sets you an example. If you 
could do your work as the earth does its work, you 
would indeed show yourseK a man. How true it has 



MANLINESS. 309 

been to its daily and yearly task ever since it was 
launched into the sky ! Many of the lower animals, 
dear friends, are all the time teaching us a lesson, 
setting us an example. What perfect servants to you 
your horses and oxen often are ! If you would do the 
work God gives you as well as they do the work you 
give them, this would be a world of order, happiness, 
and joy. The beneficent changes in nature can all be 
depended upon. There is no caprice in them. They 
come in their fixed round, as though they thoroughly 
felt the importance of what they have to do. While 
the earth has stood, summer and winter, cold and heat, 
seed-time and harvest, day and night, have known 
their places. The whole creation above and beneath, 
in things small and great, is earnest, determined, 
steady in its movements. You have only to be like it 
in the task which God has given you, and you will 
live a perfect life. You will show yourself a man 
when you do what a man should, as the sun and earth 
and seasons, and obedient dumb creatures, are each per- 
fect in their places by doing their parts in the general 
plan. How unworthy of us to evade the path of duty, 
to linger in it, to grow weary of our work, and let our 
minds be diverted from it, while this earnest, unswerv- 
ing, and withal joyous life is ever going on about us 
and over our heads ! 

David spoke the words of our text to Solomon, 
when Solomon was about to succeed him on the throne 
of Israel. God gives each of us something to do in 
the world. He gave Solomon a Idngdom to govern. 
And his wish, coming by David, was that he should 
be a manly king. There had been many unmanly 
kings before the day of Solomon, and there have been 
many since his day. He did not himself escape this 



310 SERMONS. 

weakness in the latter part of his reign. He showed 
himself a man when he first came to the throne ; was 
altogether worthy of his high office, punishing crimes, 
redressing wrongs, tempering justice with mercy, de- 
serving and receiving the glad homage of his sub- 
jects. But when he swerved from this manly course, 
became effeminate, dallied with false religions, and 
sought to profit by his people rather than do them 
good, then the seeds of revolt were sown, which bore 
their dread harvest in the time of Rehoboam. Saul, 
the first king of Israel, did his royal work in a very 
unmanly way. He did not seem to comprehend its 
meaning. He looked on the kingdom as his own, and 
not as a great trust received from God. His desire in 
reigning was to please himself, and advance his own 
name and family, rather than be a blessing to his peo- 
ple. He had an impulsive generosity ; he was a brave 
warrior ; he had his moments of noble inspiration ; 
but he utterly failed to show himself a man. He was 
not true to his trust, as the sun and earth are to theirs. 
Christ has taught us, by His words and in His life, 
what a man should be. He, who was the Son of man, 
made it His business to minister to others. So far as 
Saul, or David, or Solomon failed to do this, he did not 
make a manly use of his royal power. When Joash 
was brought forth by the priest Jehoiada and made 
king of Judah, he, though he was but eight years old, 
began to show how a king who is but a boy may be a 
man. He put an end to the abuses which had grown 
up under Athaliah, idolatries ceased out of the land, 
and the worship of the true God was reestablished. 
Joash found by studying the law that his kingdom 
was a theocracy, founded for the working out of cer- 
tain great purposes of God. From that, its lawful 



MANLINESS. 311 

end, it had been sadly turned aside ; and his first care 
was to brings it back to its original idea. In this he 
showed a determination to be true to his high trust. 
If not a man in years, he yet was in spirit and in the 
conduct of his kingdom. He did not show himseK a 
tyrant or a brute, but was so faithful, in the place 
where God had put him, that he was more than a 
king ; he was a man. It was not his royal title, but 
his sturdy manhood, which honored God. However 
high one's position is, his character is something 
higher if what it ought to be. The office may be 
great, but he is greater by simply showing himself a 
true man. If you are a brother of low degree, you 
may have such a manhood that no one will ever think 
of the degree. That is sunk out of sight. Oh, what 
a victory if, when men think of you, all else is for- 
gotten, — your poverty or wealth, your weakness or 
power, your obscurity or renown, — and they see 
before their minds only a true man, made in the 
image of God ! 

Kings are not the only persons, therefore, who 
should show themselves men. There were prophets 
in Israel and Judah in the days of the kings, and 
some of these, almost as much as the kings, failed of 
being true men. Samuel is almost the only one, whose 
whole history we know, on whom there rests no stain. 
From infancy on, through youth and mature life, into 
old age, and even till death, he was true to his office. 
He was steady, earnest, and vigilant in the work which 
God gave him. If his name stands out consiDicuous 
in the past, that is because his lofty manhood lifted it 
up far above all that his prophetic rank could do. 
Elisha also, in the time of Ahab, was another who 
for the manful discharge of duty may stand near to 



312 SERMONS. 

Samuel. Of tlie personal history of other prophets 
we do not know so much. Elijah was at times ex- 
ceedingly brave ; and the only fit way for such a man 
as he to leave the world was in a whirlwind of fire. 
But at times he lost heart, and murmured, and fled 
away from the face of danger into deserts and caves. 
He hardly showed himseK a man while sitting under 
the juniper tree, and wishing for himself that he 
might die. He certainly was not a man in the sense 
of our text, but showed that human weakness from 
which a true manhood makes one free. When the 
Lord told Jonah to go and preach in Nineveh, Jonah 
did an unmanly thing in running away and taking 
ship to flee to Tarshish.'^ God taught him, by a won- 
derful deliverance from the sea, that His servants are 
never unsafe. Being thus admonished, he found cour. 
a-ge to go to Nineveh when God spoke the second time. 
But again he forgot himself, and failed to play the 
man, when God, moved by the penitence of Nineveh, 
reversed His word concerning it. Jonah did not so 
use his prophetic office as to leave behind him the 
impression of an earnest and faithful man. That 
sturdy old prophet Micaiah, in the time of Ahab and 
Jehoshaphat, might have taught him a lesson. Mica- 
iah was not afraid of Ahab and his terrible wife Jeze- 
bel, and his four hundred and fifty false prophets. 
He told them to their faces what God thought of 
them, and for his manly honesty had been thrown 
into prison. When he was sent for, at the instance 
of Jehoshaphat, on the eve of the fatal march against 
Ramoth-Gilead, he dared to be a man as well as a 
prophet. They might mock him, and smite him, and 
starve him to death in their dungeons, but they could 
not make him false to his divine office. The word 



MANLINESS. 313 

which God had given him he would speak, thus doing 
his duty man-fashion ; and what should come of it 
was not for him but for God to determine. 

Dear friends, there were captives in ancient times 
who showed themselves men more than some prophets 
and kings. Such was Joseph. Hather than commit 
a crime, he would be cast into prison by Pharaoh. 
He was but a youth ; yet he feared not to suffer, or 
even to die, while his manhood remained to him un- 
stained. The dreams of greatness which had come 
to him years before did not turn his head, though he 
had the simplicity to tell them. He would be a man 
in Egypt, although he was a slave. A dark cloud 
rested on his future, but he would not fling away the 
present. He still believed that God was God, and 
that nothing else became him so much as to be a man. 
It is not the power and honor to which Joseph rose in 
Egypt for which we now admire him. He could not 
have thus risen but for the sturdy manliness which 
was in him ; and this it is which has made him a mem- 
orable example to all the young. And the manly 
spirit which was in him was again acted out, many 
centuries later, at the court of Babylon by Daniel, an- 
other Hebrew captive. What a temptation to him to 
be so in favor with the king ! His office of cupbearer 
brought him into the midst of all the voluptuous feasts 
and revels at the royal palace. But the eating and 
drinking were in the presence of idols, often the ac- 
companiment or even a part of idolatrous worship. 
Hence Daniel abhorred the feasts, though his duty 
forced him to see them. As a true man he served his 
royal master, and as a true man he would not be false 
to his God. Nothing which had the taint of idolatry 
upon it could be made to enter his mouth. When 



314 V SERMONS. 

fears were expressed about Ms health, lie had faith 
to throw himself on God ; and the result of the ex- 
periment which he permitted to be tried showed that 
God does not forsake those who do not forsake Him. 
Daniel believed what God had said concerning Je- 
rusalem ; and therefore he was man enough to pray 
for its rebuilding though accused for it to the king. 
Just to test the sturdiness of his faith, the decree 
went forth that whoever prayed to any but the king 
should be given to the lions. But Daniel was not 
overawed. He still opened his windows, and prayed 
three times a day with his face toward Jerusalem. 
Here, now, is the grand fact in Daniel's history. He 
was more than a fair and accomplished young person, 
more than a favorite at court, more than a prophet by 
whom God spoke to the king. He was a man and 
dared to show that he was. He played the man at 
the risk of everything else ; for his manliness was of 
that noble kind which the most terrible threats can- 
not make untrue to itself. 

The captive who shows himself a man is greater 
than the prophet or king who does not. If you are 
true yourself and put that truth into all your work, 
whatever you do will be glorious. It is not on the 
office or station, but on the man, that everything de- 
pends. 

Christ chose out twelve men to be disciples or apos- 
tles under Him. This gave them a certain official 
dignity ; but it was a shame to them, rather than an 
honor, if they failed to exercise their office in a manly 
way. The office did not hide Peter's shame, but 
made him the more abhorred, when h6 denied his 
Master. Judas held the official rank of an apostle, 
but that could not save him from .the infamy of his 



MANLINESS. 315 

own sin. The fact of discipleship only made more 
obvious the baseness of those who were not manly 
enough to stand by their Lord in his extremity, but 
forsook him and fled. It is the misfortune of many 
persons that their names cannot be forgotten. The 
providence of God gave them a place in history which 
ensures their immortality. But it is an immortality by 
no means to be desired. They are remembered only 
to be abhorred. The greater the part they acted in life 
the deeper their shame, since they acted in a very un- 
manly way. We are accustomed to say, when a man 
becomes a disciple of Christ, that he is on the road to 
all perfection. That is true. But he must put his 
manhood into his discipleship, or it will do him small 
good. Only as the first disciples became true men 
did their discipleship lift them to hoKness and to God. 
Those who loved the praise of men more than the praise 
of God mi«ht as well have been called somethins; else 
as followers of Christ. It would have been better for 
Ananias not to pretend to consecrate his land than it 
was to do this and then keep a part of its price to 
himself. Peter and John showed the spirit which our 
text recommends when, being forbidden to preach any 
more in Christ's name, they said, " We must obey 
God rather than men." No matter how great any 
work may be in which you engage, it can do you no 
honor if a truly manful spirit be left out of it ; and, 
however small it may be, such a spirit in it makes it 
noble. 

Have we ever thought how much the divine man- 
liness of Christ had to do with the glory of His life 
on earth ? He called himself the Son of man ; and 
there was no name in which He delighted more than 
this. He was the only perfect Man that has ever 



316 SERMONS. 

lived. The Spirit of God, resting without measure 
upon Him, made Him what no one else has been. Go 
where He would, all things about Him were lifted 
up and made noble by His presence. He filled out 
every relation of life to its utmost meaning ; no other 
such Friend, Brother, Teacher, Son, Redeemer, because 
no other such Man. It was not His actions and words 
in themselves, but the glory of a divine manhood fill- 
ing them, which made them so wonderful. This trans- 
figured everything He touched. This made beautiful 
the plain and rude people whom He loved and who 
returned His love. If some other person, less a man 
than He, had done the very same things which He 
did, there would have been no such result. Besides 
all else which God has taught us by sending His Son 
into the world. He has shown how wondrous a thing 
our human nature may be when wholly free from the 
taint of sin. God crowned man with glory and honor, 
and set him over the work of His hands. Wherever 
you find a true man, a person who is all which that 
high word implies, there you find that to which out- 
ward glory can add nothing. It eclipses the most 
splendid surroundings ; it transfigures the meanest 
earthly lot. We do not stop to ask whether its robe 
be of purple or sackcloth, for we are wholly taken up 
and carried away by the thing itself. 

And here we see that there can be no true man- 
hood which does not have its root aind sources in God. 
Christ was in the Father and the Father in Him ; and 
this is what made Him the only perfect Man the world 
has ever seen. True manhood is not something which 
we have already attained : it is an ideal toward which 
the best and holiest are as yet struggling. We have 
not apprehended but we press toward the mark. In 



MANLINESS. 317 

the highest sense of the words, no one will show 
himseK a man till his character reflects the image of 
Christ. As He said when He came into the world, so 
you must be able to say, " Lo ! I come to do thy will, 
O God," or the germs of a true manhood are yet to 
spring up in you. If you were a king and did not use 
your royal power for God's glory and the good of your 
subjects, you would not be a man, and so would lose 
what is more to you than a kingdom. If you were a 
prophet and prophesied falsely, you would not be the 
better but the worse for your noble gift. Whatever 
you do, do it in man-fashion, doing all to the glory of 
God, and you have every reason to be therewith con- 
tent. The manly slave shall wear a nobler immortal- 
ity beside the crystal waters than the unmanly king. 
Take Christ's name upon you, and so let all the world 
see that you have made His divine manhood your 
great ideal. Having set this perfect pattern of a Man 
before you, press bravely toward it in the strength 
which God imparts. Serve your Lord and Master as 
one should who has begun to show himself a man. 
Faith in Him is the only point from which a true life 
can begin, and whoever manfully lives out that life, 
filling his earthly lot with it, and pouring it into what- 
ever he does, whether great or small, shall at length 
fi^nd that it has made him a king and priest unto his 
God. 



TURNING DEATH INTO LIFE. 

And everything shall live whither the river cometh. — Ezeeiel 
xlvii. 9. 

We have in the first twelve verses of the forty- 
seventh chapter of Ezekiel a picture of the world so 
far as yet unchristianized, and also more especially a 
picture of the blessed work which the gospel is to do 
in the world by its progress and final triumphs. Is it 
not a picture which we should be glad to contem- 
plate, that our courage and zeal and faith may be 
set on fire as often as we look around us and before 
us on the kingdom we are trying to extend ? Though 
this were a spiritually dead world but for Jesus Christ, 
yet the flowing out from Him of those regenerative 
forces which are to turn that death into life has al- 
ready begun. The " East country," towards which our 
text says the waters issued out, is the upper part of 
the valley of Jehoshaphat lying between the ridge on 
which Jerusalem stands and the Olivet range. The 
" desert " into which those waters go down when they 
turn southward, is that same valley, widening or nar- 
rowing in its course, and full of rocks and sandy 
wastes, and the tombs and graves of the dead. The 
sea into which the waters are " brought forth," and 
which is healed by their life-giving touch, is the 
dead sea in which the valley of Jehoshaphat suddenly 
and dismally ends. That valley and sea were to the 
Jewish mind a symbol of what is most barren, most 



TURNING DEATH INTO LIFE. 319 

gloomy, most desolate. Tliis would be especially true 
at the sad time when Ezekiel wrote. How profound 
his sense of the dead and wasted condition of a sinful 
world, while he chooses the blighted valley of the 
Kidron, and the sea in which no fish can live, to im- 
age that condition forth ! It was across the valley of 
the Kidron that David fled from his son Absalom, 
broken-hearted and weeping as he went on, passing 
the heights of Bahurim from which Shimei cast down 
stones upon him. By the brook Kidron Asa, when 
he came to the throne, destroyed and burnt the idol 
which his mother had set up, near which in a grove an 
abominable worship had been long practiced. Here, 
according to Josephus, the terrible Athaliah, daughter 
of the equally terrible Jezebel, was at the command of 
Jehoiada slain. In this valley, near to Jerusalem, the 
bloody and loathsome idol- worships, into which God's 
people were so prone to be led away, were for a long 
time practiced. Into it, or one of its branches, the 
litter and filth of the city were carried forth and burnt, 
whence our Saviour's image of Gehenna, the valley of 
the son of Hinnom, in which the fire was not quenched. 
The valley of Jehoshaphat became a cemetery about 
the time of king Josiah, thus rendering it unclean in 
the eyes of all Jews ; and one of the miracles which 
Jeremiah foretold, thus anticipating the prophecy in 
our text, was the recovering of the polluted place to 
its early sacredness. Blight, desolation, uncleanness, 
and death were what the valley to the east and south 
stood for to the mind of Ezekiel. This was his sym- 
bol of the spiritual condition of men, which he drew 
for those whom he was addressing. And if we follow 
on down the dead ravine till we come to the sea at its 
mouth, the same lesson is impressed on us still. How 



320 SERMONS. 

like the false world that sea is ! Its waters are said to 
be clear, and its surface a bright blue-and-green under 
the crystalline sky, but nothing can live in its depths : 
it is supposed that the wicked cities of the plain strew 
its bottom with their wrecks ; on its shore grow those 
apples of Sodom golden to the sight, but which turn 
to ashes on the lips. Such is man, such is the world, 
whether Jew or Gentile, the prophet means that we 
shall understand, as he paints his picture of the valley 
and the sea which are dead. 

Did Ezekiel exaggerate, dear friends, in this ? Did 
he paint the Christless world more desolate and dead 
than it really is ? Not if we take the Bible testimony 
as true. Go back to the times before the flood. What 
was then the spiritual state of the world, on account of 
which the flood came? Do we not find the fitting 
symbol of it in the valley and sea of Ezekiel's vision ? 
It was necessary to put what remained of goodness 
into an ark, and float it off on the waters which 
drowned all else, in order that some seeds of hope for 
the future might be saved. "It repented the Lord 
that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved 
Him to the heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy 
man whom I have created from off the face of the 
earth." " God looked upon the earth, and behold it 
was corrupt ; " and God said, " The earth is filled 
with violence." Such is the charge which is brought 
against the world in Genesis, — a world which had 
forsaken God, and upon which this heavy charge must 
still rest so long as it is a Christless world. Dead, 
corrupt, needing to be buried out of God's sight, is 
the voice which we hear sounding through the times 
of the patriarchs, of Moses, of the Judges, of Samuel. 
Nor do we miss the sad refrain in the minstrelsy of 



TURNING DEATH INTO LIFE. 321 

the sweet singer of Israel. How he bemoans the 
blight which has fallen on his own soul, in the fifty- 
first Psalm ! And in another psalm, catching up words 
which echo out of the dim past, he says : " The Lord 
looked down from heaven upon the children of men, 
to see if there were any that did understand and seek 
God. They are all gone aside, they are together be- 
come filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not 
one." This is David's indictment against himself and 
against the world. Does it not warrant the picture 
which Ezekiel drew of the valley and the sea ? Look- 
ing on that picture, would not Moses and the prophets 
say, " It is true, it is not too strong a symbol of what 
we have seen or felt, and have recorded as the spirit 
of God moved us " ? Does our Lord Jesus Christ him- 
self say anything less than this in his parables, in his 
sermons, in his private talks, in which he so accuses 
and upbraids both the Jews and the Gentiles? I 
think St. Paul knew as much of his own heart, and of 
the world's heart, as any man has ever known. Yet 
there is nothing in the Old Testament or in the gos- 
pels more terrible than what he says in the first, sec- 
ond, and third of Romans. He quotes the strongest 
words of the holy men of old, and to these he adds 
others of appalling severity, prompted by what he had 
seen of heathen life in his mission travels. Yes, dear 
friends, you must go outside of epistle, outside of 
gospel, outside of psalm and prophecy, outside the 
lids of the divine book, if you would find anything to 
prove that Ezekiel's picture was too dark. 

And if you go outside into secular history, into any 
or all of the Christless civilizations, whether ancient 
or modern, what then ? They all tell the same story 
which Ezekiel's vision told. Where is Egypt now ? 



322 SERMONS. 

Look on her faded landscapes, her wretched, starving 
people ; and then think of what she once was ! — the 
mother of ancient letters, science and art, as her pa- 
pyrus rolls, her buried cities, her tombs, her obelisks, 
her pyramids show. All gone, and her people sunk 
into a dead sea of beggary and vice ! Her far-off be- 
ginnings, like the fountains of Gihon which once flowed 
into Kidron, are to-day like the sea of death, and the 
wasted valley full of the graves of the dead. If she 
is getting any life, is starting up from her slumber in 
these recent years and showing any small capacity for 
enterprise and thrift, this has come to her out of other 
nations that are Christian ; the blessed waters, which 
make everything they touch live, are beginning to 
mingle with her Christless life. Nineveh, Babylon, 
ay, Troy and Mycenae, are telling the same story, 
once vast and magnificent, now buried out of sight ; 
once ruling over nations, now the abodes of the robber 
and owl and jackal ; springing forth in the early an- 
tiquity like the fountains and pools which watered the 
gardens of Siloam, now like the valley of tombs and 
graves and the bitter sea of death to which that valley 
leads down. The story which these particular chap- 
ters of ancient history tell, the whole volume tells. 
The history of the entire world is like the history 
of its parts. And what humanity is, such is every 
man, — a dreary abyss of desolation and death is the 
Christless soul. There may be much mechanical and 
mental activity in China, in Japan, in southern India, 
but, alas ! how little spiritual life where the waters of 
the heavenly river have not gone ! A dead world, full 
of dead souls, - — dead because cut off from God so as 
no more to live by the infinite life in Him, — is the 
sentence which we roundly give ; and we find no real 



TURNING DEATH INTO LIFE. 323 

contradiction of it, but much to confirm it everywhere, 
in the Bible and out of the Bible. We behold actual 
humanity spreading away down and before us, like the 
valley from Jerusalem, and we say, " Can this with- 
ered and scorched chasm be made fruitful, can these 
deadly waters be healed ? " 

The answer to the wondering prophet, from his di- 
vine Guide who takes him up to the temple, is, that the 
blessed transformation can take place. In Christ all 
shall be made alive. Study that image of the river, 
first ankle-deep, then knee-deep, then to the loins, then 
a river to swim in, and see how exactly it answers to 
the divine life in Christ which has already begun to 
flow forth into the world with renovating power. I 
do not believe that Ezekiel's prophecy is something 
whose fulfillment is yet to begin. I believe that the 
heavenly waters began to bubble up in the hearts of 
those whom the Holy Spirit led, before Christ came 
to our world ; I believe that the stream grew wider 
and deeper at His birth, wider and deeper still when 
He died, when He rose from the dead, when He as- 
cended up, — according to His own saying, " The 
works which I do shall ye do, and greater works shall 
ye do, because I go to the Father." 

There are some who say that the blessed stream is 
growing smaller and smaller, — that it is doomed to 
sink into the sand, and not to reappear till Christ's 
second coming. But I find no such teaching as that 
in the prophecy ; on the contrary, just the opposite. 
The river grows, it does not diminish ; it grows stead- 
ily, all the time showing a larger and mightier sweep 
through the valley. In just what stage of its whole 
course the blessed river of the gospel is, we cannot 
tell; it may be a long time before the living fish 



324 SERMONS. 

shall be seen swimming in the sea. But there is 
steady progress, and has been ever since Christ as- 
cended. Apostolic missions planted a leaven in the 
East, the savor of which is there still. The early- 
work which they did has not utterly failed, as we 
sometimes hastily think. Throughout Syria and 
Turkey and Persia, up the Nile and on the deserts, 
memories are found, traditions, religious customs and 
beliefs, which recall the practice and doctrine of the 
first Christian disciples. If the people of those lands 
need to be again evangelized, that need is due more 
to their degeneracy and superstition under oppressive 
governments than to any failure of the gospel among 
them. At the lakes of Tanganyika and Nyanza, in 
Central Africa, have been found a people ready to 
welcome the spirit and teachings of the New Testa- 
ment. Whether you read the whole history of Chris- 
tianity, its history since the time of Luther, or since 
the first missionaries went to the Sandwich Islands, 
the proofs are overwhelming. The vision of Ezekiel 
is coming true. Where was spiritual death we are 
seeing more and more of spiritual life. The desert is 
blossoming. The river of salvation, springing forth 
by the altar in the sanctuary, is on its way. If we do 
not see " Holiness to the Lord" written on the bells of 
the horses, we see something very much like it even 
stamped on some of our coins. The first words which 
throbbed through the wires of the telegraph were, 
" What hath God wrought I " " Peace on earth, good- 
will toward men," was sent flashing under the sea as 
soon as the ocean cable was laid. One of the great 
buildings in London, whose power over the commerce 
of the world is everywhere acknowledged, has written 
on its high pediment the words, "The earth is the 



TURNING DEATH INTO LIFE. 325 

Lord's, and the fullness thereof." There is no mis- 
taking these large signs of the spirit of our day. 
Whatever partial failures, or retrograde here and 
there, there may be, the activity and enterprise of the 
world is, on the whole, steadily receiving into itself 
more and more of the spirit of Christ. We might as 
well doubt the motion of the earth as the progress of 
Christ's kingdom. To oppose that kingdom is like 
trying to turn the earth back in its orbit : to be in it 
and of it is to live safely and victoriously. Should 
some engineering skill, like that which has made a 
path for commerce through Egyptian sands, also let 
the waters of the great sea into the African desert, the 
gospel of Christ will ride triumphant on their tides to 
almost the last centre of Satan's kingdom. 

We have seen now, dear friends, what was the gen- 
eral scope of Ezekiel's vision, — how it imaged forth 
the spiritual state of a Christless world, and the ren- 
ovation which Christ should bring. St. John had a 
similar vision in Patmos, which he speaks of in strik- 
ingly similar terms. Indeed, he helps us to the high 
and true meaning of what Ezekiel saw. His river 
proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb is 
that which gushed up by the altar in the Temple. His 
is a river of life, and so was that. Ezekiel says : 
" And by the river on the bank thereof, on this side 
and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose 
leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be 
consumed : it shall bring forth new fruit according to 
his months, because their waters they issued out of 
the sanctuary ; and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, 
and the leaf thereof for medicine." This is what the 
prophet foretold, and this is what the apostle saw com- 
ing true ; for John says : " And he showed me a pure 



326 SERMONS. 

river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out 
of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst 
of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was 
there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of 
fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the 
leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." 
Thus did the seer in Patmos behold the gospel which 
came by Christ flowing through the world, and giving 
life and joy to whatever it touched, as Ezekiel had 
seen so long before, and as the story of the Christian 
ages everywhere confirms. The healing stream sprang 
up by the altar ; and the altar in the Temple, we know, 
foreshadowed the cross of Christ. Calvary, then, with 
its cross and sacrifice, is the centre from which the 
world's renovation begins. Wonderful as was the 
birth of Christ, we are not to look to that. Wonder- 
ful as was His daily walk, and the words He spake, 
our salvation does not begin in them. It is under the 
altar, beneath the shadow of the cross, that we are to 
find the fountain-head of the stream which awakes 
and blesses the world. The cross and its sacrifice 
must be preached as the way by which God's own life 
comes down into the souls of men. What becomes of 
your river when you leave that out, that which is its 
source ? " God forbid that I should glory in aught else 
save the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ," said St. Paul ; 
and the passion which men have for multiplying forms 
of the cross in architecture, in jewels, and other per- 
sonal ornaments, is a dumb confession of the universal 
human heart that the sacrifice on Calvary is God's 
most precious gift to His sinning children. That is 
the unspeakable gift. That takes away the sins of 
the world. That brings life eternal into souls dead in 
sin. Ezekiel saw the stream of life flowing from the 



TURNING DEATH INTO LIFE. 327 

altar ; John saw it flowing from under the throne in 
heaven. God and the Lamb both sat on that throne. 
They were alike concerned in giving life to the world. 
No disagreement, but perfect consent and union, 
marked their counsel in the plan which they laid 
before the world was, and which they have been carry- 
ing out through all the ages of time. 

Yes, dear friends, the world's redemption is not of 
any human origin; it proceeds from the throne of 
God and the Lamb. They preside over it still. It is 
essentially a supernatural and divine work, as was the 
life-giving river which Ezekiel saw. No merely nat- 
ural waters could awake and beautify the dead valley 
of the Kidron ; no natural stream could heal the sea 
in which nothing^ lived. The Jordan had been flow- 
ing down into that dead sea from its beginning. The 
beautiful Jordan ! born of the pure snows of Lebanon 
and Hermon, bursting forth in such sudden volume 
near Csesarea Philippi, gathering itself into the clear 
lake Merom, flowing on amid verdure and bloom and 
golden grain, receiving into its stream the waters of 
Israel and Gilead, making the fair sea of Galilee 
which our Lord so loved, winding in many a graceful 
fold through the low and rich valley on past the city 
of palm-trees ! — this Jordan, so oft overflowing all its 
banks, through whose channel Israel went dry-shod, 
which the mantle of Elijah divided twice, and in 
which the Saviour of the world was baptized, could 
not freshen and sweeten the sea of death. So, dear 
friends, there is nothing in art and government how- 
ever venerable, nothing in mere culture however 
superb, nothing in merely human or natural influences 
though as sacred as the Jordan itself, which can de- 
liver and save the world. The world has had all this 



328 SERMONS. 

for ages on ages, is still having it to repletion, yet at 
tlie moutli of it all we find a dead sea. The river of 
God, the stream which is not natural but supernatural, 
which springs from the altar, from the cross, from 
under the throne of God and the Lamb, must do the 
work. The spiritual renaissance, that quickening and 
adorning of human society which is to give us the 
new heaven and new earth, must begin from God the 
Father and God the Son, and must have the life of 
the blessed Trinity in it all the way, whether it be to 
the ankles, or to the knees, or to the loins, or a river 
broad and deep in which one may swim. It must be 
full of the life of God, or it cannot bring healing to 
the sea, or it cannot make whatever thing it comes to 
live, or there will not be on its banks the trees whose 
fruit is for meat and their leaves for medicine. What 
the dead seas and valleys of human society need ; 
what you and I need, dear friends, in order that we 
may be the sons of God which He made us to be, — is 
not more culture, not more knowledge, not more of 
that refinement which the skill and genius of man may 
bring, but an awakening, cleansing, and sanctifying 
life brought down by the Holy Spirit into our souls. 
May the grace of the Lord Jesus evermore keep us in 
that life-giving communion, and let us rejoice in the 
truth that our fellowship with the Spirit is in a king- 
dom which takes no step backward, but whose power 
flows out and on, and will be ever vaster and mightier, 
till it has made all things new ! 



THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS. 

And the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before 
the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of 
odors, which are the prayers of saints. — Revelation v. 8. 

The prayers of the saints. Not of any given num- 
ber of the saints, whether in heaven or on earth, but 
of all the saints. The prayers of those above and of 
those below ; of those now alive on the earth, and of 
those who have lived throughout the past generations 
of men. Every prayer of contrite and submissive 
spirits that has been lifted up since the time when 
men first began to call on the name of the Lord until 
now. That atmosphere of entreaty, breathed forth 
from God-fearing hearts, which ever since the early 
twilight of history has embosomed the world. The 
prayers of every lonely widow, of every dependent 
orphan, of the sailor sinking in the waves, of the sol- 
dier dying on the field of battle, and of every sick or 
despised or forsaken believer, if offered in faith, are 
a portion of the prayers of the saints. Such prayers 
as those of Moses, David, Elijah, Daniel, — who 
looked forward through the unfolding history of the 
Hebrew people. That prayer of the lowly Redeemer, 
in which, with words that we cannot fathom. He com- 
mended His disciples to the Father. The prayers of 
martyrs, whereby, upon the scaffold or in the flame, 
they have bequeathed a legacy of blessing to the 
world. Prayers of missionaries, such as they offer up 
on quitting their native shores, and in the dark places 



330 SERMONS. 

which are full of the habitations of cruelty. The 
prayers of the persecuted, — such as those of the prim- 
itive churches, those of the Waldenses in Italy, the 
Lutherans in Germany, the Huguenots in France, the 
Covenanters in Scotland, the Dissenters in England, 
— all these are a part of the precious store set forth 
before God in the golden vials. Prayers such as that 
offered by Robinson on board the Mayflower, when 
he committed his exiled flock to the care of a storm- 
controlling and covenant-keeping God ; such as that 
which the Pilgrims themselves breathed up, when they 
knelt on the icy rock and implored the divine guar- 
dianship for them and their infant state. A vast num- 
ber of these prayers have been answered, — some of 
them almost immediately, even while the saint was 
speaking ; others after a long trial of patience and 
much "continual coming." But a vast number of 
them also are yet unanswered ; and unto this store 
others are joining themselves daily, going up from 
devout hearts like the mist from the surface of all 
waters, so that the " golden vials " are in no danger 
of being at any time found empty. In times of se- 
vere drought in nature, we know that the streams and 
springs which have disappeared have only been trans- 
ferred to the upper air, where in due time they will 
take the form of showers and descend to refresh and 
beautify the earth. So, in the days when the word of 
the Lord is precious, — when there is no open vision, 
and the rain of spiritual blessing is withheld, — we 
know that the " golden vials " are gathering in what we 
miss below, and that, though God bears long with His 
elect. He is waiting only for all the tithes to come in, 
when He will pour out the blessing until we lack for 
room to receive it. The prayers of the founders and 



THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS. 331 

supporters of this church, who have passed on to be 
nearer our common Lord ; the prayers of fathers and 
mothers, of grandparents, and of remoter ancestors back 
far as we care to trace our line of descent, — if not yet 
answered, are garnered on high ; and, so far as they 
might claim to be called prayers of faith, they at this 
moment hover above us, only waiting God's set time 
when they will descend upon us in showers of blessing. 
How intimate, nay, how identical, the church mili- 
tant with the church triumphant ! They are but one 
kingdom — a kingdom not of this world, nor of any 
other world, but a kingdom which is peace and joy in 
the Holy Ghost ; which is apprehended not by sight, 
but by faith ; which is a thing of inward experience, 
not a thing of outward discovery or attainment; 
which is everywhere to the trusting Christian, coming 
into his open heart and abiding with him ; but which 
is nowhere to the worldly and unbelieving, though 
they take to themselves wings, and explore the uni- 
verse in quest thereof. It is one family with one 
Father, even God, and one elder Brother, even Christ 
the Saviour. We enter it, not by any natural pro- 
cess, but by the regeneration of the Holy Ghost. If 
men say " here," or " there," we go not out after 
them. Space and time do not condition the inheri- 
tance of the believing. It is now and here, as it al- 
ways has been and always will be, to him that hear- 
eth the voice saying " To-day," and hardeneth not his 
heart. It is natural for us to conceive of heaven as 
something local, and there is a certain very precious 
truth in that conception. But there is also truth in 
that idea which dissociates it from the idea of locality. 
We may regard it as a place which we travel to- 
wards, and from which we are excluded in this life. 



332 SERMONS. 

But it is not remote ; we are not shut out from it. 
The fault is in our vision, in our perception. Our 
eyes are holden. We see but dimly, not because 
there is lack of light, but because there is lack of sen- 
sibility in the eye of our spirit. The warm sun is 
around us, but the nerves of feeling in our souls are 
so dead that they seem chilled through and through. 
To say that we are getting nearer heaven, is only an- 
other form of saying that we apprehend more clearly 
what has always been " nigh " us. We speak of the 
saints in light as standing in the immediate presence 
of Christ, and of ourselves as yet pilgrims in a far-off 
land ; but the real difference is, that they have learned 
to walk altogether by faith, while we yet walk more 
or less by sight. We are in the presence of Christ no 
less than they ; nor can we, any more than they, go 
from His presence, though we ascend into heaven or 
descend into the depths, or take the wings of the 
morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. 
Wherever we are, God's hand sustains us, and His 
right hand doth hold us. This oneness, this nearness 
of all that are Christ's ; this blending of heaven and 
earth in a single communion, whose centre always is 
everywhere, — stands out more clearly to our unsancti- 
fied minds, as we think of our petitions, uniting in one 
cloud of incense with the petitions of every other holy 
heart, and rising continually before God, with a sweet- 
smelling savor, out of those " golden vials " that con- 
tain the prayers of all saints. 

But this is not all. That worship, going on always 
before God, not only includes the whole church, visi- 
ble and invisible : it also has respect to events which 
are to occur on the earth. The prayers of the saints 
are for blessings to be bestowed, and victories to be 



THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS. 333 

achieved, not in a future eternity but in time. Nearly- 
all the grand scenes pictured to us in the Apocalypse 
are to be enacted on the globe we now inhabit. The 
holy city, the new Jerusalem, is to " come down out of 
heaven from God." The earth is to be purified and 
renewed, and God and Christ are to dwell with men. 
They that sleep in Jesus shall be raised, and they that 
are alive on the earth shall be chanoed at the comino; 
of the Lord. Not in some far-off region, at an infi- 
nite remove from our planet, but here, visible to the 
inhabitants of this terrestrial ball, shall be the new 
heavens and the new earth, with no more sea. Those 
prayers, rising as the smoke of sacrifice ever since the 
dawn of time, are to be answered in the conversion of 
souls to Christ, — in the bringing of all knees to bow, 
and every tongue to confess that He is Lord ; in the 
spreading and triumphing of the gospel throughout 
the world ; in the purification, upbuilding, and uni- 
versal dominion of the Redeemer's kingdom ; when 
the war-worn hosts of the faithful are permitted to put 
off their armor and gird themselves with the gar- 
ment of praise, — when from every distant shore and 
island, and rocky fastness and desert plain, whither 
the missionaries of the cross have gone to publish the 
glad tidings, there shall go up the joyful acclaim, 
" The kingdoms of the world have become the king- 
doms of our Lord and of His Christ." To that con- 
summation, and everything preparatory thereto, and 
not to something that shall be when time is no longer, 
the prayers of the saints have respect. Forgetting 
the joys of the immortality before them, even those 
now standing by the throne bend downward their 
eyes toward this lower creation, which groaneth and 
travaileth in pain, and pray for its deliverance into 
the liberty of the sons of God. 



334 SERMONS, 

Observe that it is the prayers of the saints, not 
prayers to the saints, that have so constant a respect 
to the welfare of our world. There is no warrant 
here for that popish corruption whereby the favor of 
God is made to be dependent on the goodwill of our 
fellow-creatures, — nothing to indicate that we must 
propitiate saint this and saint that, by building them 
a cathedral, or endowing a convent, or perpetual mass 
in their name. No spirit, whether out of the body or 
still in the body, that is worthy to be counted among 
the saints, needs to be hired to perform the blessed 
service of prayer. All saints pray ; but they pray 
to God, not to one another. And all the motive and 
all the reward they ask is, that God would keep, 
through His own name, them that are Christ's, and 
make all men see and share the blessedness of believ- 
ing in Him. 

The imagery employed in the text is eminently Jew- 
ish. The writer was a descendant of Abraham. He 
had been accustomed all his life to the imposing Tem- 
ple service established by Moses. He was familiar 
with the lives of the ancient believers. He loved to 
lose himself in long and absorbing meditations upon 
the wonderful history of the Hebrew nation. His cast 
of mind was Oriental, and the sentiment of nationality 
was remarkably strong in him. It was natural that 
his revelations, which God gave him during his exile 
in Patmos, should be given to the world through the 
imagery and types of the Old Testament. Hence we 
have the "four and twenty elders," — corresponding 
to the leaders of the twenty-four courses of priests in 
the Temple at Jerusalem. Hence we have the " golden 
vials," — not such vessels as our English word " vial " 
might seem to indicate, but broad, open bowls or 



THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS. 335 

dishes, such as the Jewish priests made use of, which 
were beaten out of fine gokl, and in which the incense 
to be sprinkled on the sacrifice was brought to the 
altar. Hence "the four beasts," — not "beasts" in 
our sense of the word. Far from it. Not creatures 
below us on the scale of being, but inconceivably 
above us. Archangels, cherubim, seraphic beings, 
such as are often named in the prophecies of the Old 
Testament, and a symbol of which overshadowed the 
"mercy seat" on the ark of the covenant. These 
super-angelic spirits fall down continually before " the 
throne of the Lamb," thus recognizing His sovereignty 
and divinity ; and then, at a farther remove from the 
supreme glory, the twenty-four leaders of all the re- 
deemed who worship Christ fall down with their faces 
also toward the throne ; and every seraph, and every 
elder, as though conscious of his personal unworthi- 
ness, has a " golden bowl " full of odorous incense, 
which he brings with him, that his offering may be ac- 
ceptable unto the Lamb. That incense — the prayers 
of the saints — strengthens the plea of each serajDh 
and elder ; so that, while striking their harps in praise 
of what the Lamb has already accomplished, they are 
also emboldened to ask for further mercies, saying, 
" Thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of 
every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation, 
and hast made us unto our God kings and priests ; 
and we shall reicm on the earth." " We shall reion 
on the earth." That is the glorious result which the 
adoration of the Lamb contemplates. " We," — that 
is, those whom we represent ; the saints of the Most 
High God; the whole company of the good, of the 
meek and lowly in heart, who follow Christ, bearing 
His cross, manifesting His spirit, doing not their own 



336 SERMONS. 

will, but the will of their Father in heaven. Evil 
shall be overcome. Righteousness shall possess the 
earth, and the abundance of the sea shall be converted 
unto God. The garments rolled in blood shall pass 
away. In all the holy mountain there shall be noth- 
ing to hurt or destroy. The earth shall be full of the 
abundance of peace. And this glorious transforma- 
tion — this change from confusion to order, from tur- 
moil to tranquillity, from hate to love, from sullen 
enmity against God to completeness of holiness and 
joy — is to come in answer to the prayers of the saints ; 
in answer to the united and never-ceasing petitions of 
all who love the Lord Jesus Christ, — the petitions 
of every one that worshipeth the Father in spirit and 
truth, whether in this temple or at Jerusalem, whether 
yet among things seen and temporal or passed on to 
things unseen and eternal ; for all such are a part of 
the great company of saints whose prayers are for- 
ever replenishing the golden vials in the hands of the 
elders ; and it is such, of every nation and every 
degree, that the Father seeketh to worship Him. 

1. Here, then, is an encouragement to all Christians 
to continue instant in prayer ; and an admonition, 
also, against refraining from prayer. Any neglect, in 
this particular, weakens the plea with which the elders 
approach the throne. They may strike their harps, 
but the music lacks volume if our voices be not joined 
thereunto. They may offer the sacrifice, but there is 
not enough of incense in the golden vessels to send up 
a sweet-smelling cloud before God. When Christians 
cease to pray, the supplies of the armies of God fail 
them. They miss their weapons, and make but feeble 
and disastrous fight. Then it is that their great enemy 
comes out against them, and they are overcome and 



THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS. 337 

dispersed. If the saints cease praying, it is as if the 
ocean should cease sending up its vapors, or the earth 
its mists. The " cloudy cisterns " soon are empty in 
our Lord's kingdom ; the heavens are brass above us, 
and the earth is iron under our feet, and, for want of 
the moisture it craves, every plant in the garden we 
are set to cultivate droops and decays. No divine 
quicken ings come to the churches. We hear not the 
voice of penitence, nor the song of new-born souls. 
The ark of God withdraws behind the host, and the 
world stands still, or goes backward, instead of going 
forward to the day of its redemption. Every prayer, 
even the feeblest and the least, is needed to keep " the 
golden vials " always full to overflowing. How inspir- 
ing the thought that your prayers and mine, if put 
up in faith and sincerity, make but one sacrifice with 
those of the worshipers before the throne ! How tre- 
mendous the thought that our neglect to pray weakens 
their argument as they approach the Lamb in be- 
half of this yet unpurified world ! Here is a service 
which infant lips can perform. Here is a power, able 
to move the arm of God, which the lowliest maid- 
servant can wield. Here is an all-prevailing sacrifice, 
which neither the sick, nor the unknown, nor the un- 
learned, have any right to withhold. God cannot so 
afflict you with poverty and disease, and men cannot 
so forget you, and despise your humble lot, but that 
you may give, or refuse to give, a service on which 
the perfection of the church and the salvation of the 
world depend. Neglected widow, forgotten invalid, 
bowed and withered saint, the prayers of sincerity 
and faith which you are offering daily with your lips, 
or breathing in your heart, are all gathered as precious 
incense on high ; they are set forth continually in the 



338 SERMONS. 

golden vials brought by tbe elders to tbe Lamb that 
was slain ; and as you pray without ceasing, or neg- 
lect prayer, so this world goes forward or backward 
in its way to the final restitution. 

2. As with prayer, so also with Christian labor. This 
has an encouragement mighty and inspiring in the 
truth of the text. When the sower goes forth to sow, 
he knows that the strong and constant forces of nature 
cooperate with him, and that they will bring the seed- 
germs he scatters, through all the processes of growth 
and ripening, to a harvest. So with the laborer for 
Christ. All the members of the mystical body suffer 
with him and rejoice with him. The vast reservoir of 
blessing, out of which quickening influences are to 
descend on his efforts, is kept constantly full. The 
power of the prayers of the saints reinforces his labors 
day by day, and will render them effectual in their 
season. Every prayer of every missionary in the far- 
off wilderness or island co-works with him. The 
morning and evening sacrifice in all the Christian 
families of the world, the voice of petition and en- 
treaty going up every Sabbath from unnumbered 
sanctuaries, — these, and the voice that is as the voice 
of many waters before the throne, hover like a fer- 
tilizing cloud above each toiling disciple ; these bear 
up our feeble strength ; these, with all their blessed 
power, add to the force of each Christian arm ; this 
infinite, and constant, and everlasting help is yours, 
and mine, and every earnest believer's, while we go 
about laboring, giving, instructing, exhorting, entreat- 
ing, in the hope that God's will may yet be done, even 
on this sin-blighted earth, as it is done in heaven. 
Could anything be more sacred, or girt with holier 
and more solemn sanctions, than the Christian pro^ 



THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS. 339 

fession? How vast the motive, bearing upon the 
weakest disciple, to be steadfast, immovable, always 
abounding in the work of the Lord ! What an un- 
speakable opportunity we shght — what an ocean of 
holy and divine help we set at naught — when we 
faint, or repine, or slacken our zeal in all pious and 
godly endeavors ! They that be with us are more 
than they that be against us. We may seem to 
earth-bound eyes to go out single-handed to the battle, 
but as soon as the scales fall, and our faith looks 
abroad with clarified vision, we behold the mountains 
round about us full of chariots and horses. Who of 
us, seeing this great cloud of witnesses and helpers, 
can forbear laying aside every weight, and his easily 
besetting sins, and running with patience the race 
whose prize is an immortal crown ? 

3. And all these prayers and labors, filling the 
heavenly temple with their incense, are for you, my 
unbelieving brother. For you the four seraphs near- 
est the throne, bending evermore to the Lamb. For 
you the golden vials, full of the prayers of all saints, 
in the hands of the four-and-twenty elders, who cease 
not, day nor night, offering their adoration and en- 
treaty unto Him that sitteth on the throne. When 
shall your single will cease resisting this great persua- 
sion ? How long — O Lord, how long ! — shall it be 
true that the great altar sends up its sweet incense, — 
the prayers of your pious ancestors, of your godly 
ministers now on high, of your kindred and friends 
that remain, of the whole company of saints in heaven 
and on earth, who bend over you so tenderly to-day, 
as they ever have, and ever will till time shall be no 
longer, — how long shall all this be true, and you yet 
be found in your sins ? 



THE STORY OF NAAMAN, AND ITS LESSON. 

So he turned and went away in a rage. — 2 Kings v. 12. 

We do not wonder at all that Naaman was offended. 
He was a mighty man. He was commander of the 
armies of Syria, and had often seen the Israelites fly 
in terror before him. He came with a splendid reti- 
nue, with horses and chariots, bringing gold and silver 
and changes of raiment. A letter from his sovereign 
had introduced him to the king of Israel, and that 
king had sent him to Elisha ; and the object of all this 
ceremony and display was that he might be cured of 
a leprosy. There he stood, with his warlike and bril- 
liant array, before the humble dwelling of the prophet. 
He had it all planned in his own mind just how he 
should be cured. The man of God would come out ; 
would feel himself greatly honored by such an im- 
posing visit ; would receive the truly royal present 
brought for him ; would strike his hand upon the 
spot that was diseased, and then would dismiss the 
famous chieftain, recovered from his leprosy, to ride 
away in the same pompous style in which he came. 
These anticipations were all very natural in Naaman. 
But what was his reception ? Elisha does not appear ; 
he does not even invite the renowned visitor into the 
house. He sends out a servant to tell Naaman to go 
and dip himself seven times in the river Jordan. " Is 
this all ? " we can fancy that proud warrior saying to 
himseK. " Will not he even see me ? Does not he 



STORY OF NAAMAN, AND ITS LESSON. 341 

know that I am the great Syrian general ? that I have 
come all the way from Damascus to be cured ? that I 
have brought letters from my king to his king, and 
that his king has sent me to him ? Has he forgotten 
that his country pays tribute to mine ? Does he so 
disdain the costly present I have brought him, and the 
regal display with which I do him honor? Will he 
so insult my patriotism as to send me to his national 
river, as though there were not purer and lovelier 
streams in my own land ? " Thus was the old soldier 
disappointed, surprised, and wounded in his most tender 
point ; and '' so he turned and went away in a rage." 

Now do not suppose that we are repelled from Naa- 
man on account of this sudden outbreak of passion. 
It the rather draws us toward him. He is indeed in 
many respects a model character. He acted naturally 
from the beginning ; he came to the prophet's door in 
such state as befitted his position, with such presents 
and appointments as became a leader of armies, ask- 
ing a favor. You would have felt very much as he 
did in the same circumstances ; and to have concealed 
your chagrin would have been sheer hypocrisy. He 
showed what was in his heart from first to last ; and 
therefore he could be trusted. He was not angered 
so much on his own account, but because he thought 
contempt had been sho-^^Ti for his country and sov- 
ereign, because his generous effort to show great 
respect for Elisha had been treated as a thing of no 
consequence. He was passionate, but not deceitful ; 
he would not brook an insult from anybody, yet he 
was ready to converse with, and be influenced by, the 
humblest mortal. 

There was in his family at Damascus " a little maid " 
who waited on his wife. This maid had been cap- 



342 SERMONS. 

tured by the Syrians, in some of their wars with the 
Hebrews ; and, in accordance with the barbarous cus- 
tom of the times, sold into slavery. The poor captive 
recollected that she had heard of a certain " man of 
God " in her native land, who could raise the dead and 
cure the most dangerous diseases ; and one day she 
ventured to speak her thoughts to her mistress, and 
thus the matter came to the hearing of Naaman. It 
shows how lowly was her position, and how vague was 
Naaman' s idea of the way in which he was to be cured, 
that he came first to the king of Israel, supposing him 
to be the one who could heal the leprosy. But he did 
not sneer, as many would have done, at the story of 
the little captive. Her knowledge was very indefinite ; 
and she was a personage whom few in the position of 
Naaman would condescend to notice ; yet he listened 
to the report which came through her, and believed it, 
and made up his mind to act promptly in accordance 
with her suggestions. We have already alluded to 
the magnificent scale in which he carried out his pur- 
pose ; and also to the anger which he felt at finding 
his grand preparation a thing of so little account in 
the eyes of the prophet. But the storm did not last 
long ; its very violence caused it to be of short con- 
tinuance. He was not the man to harbor resentment, 
to let his bosom become the permanent abode of ill- 
will and hate. That corrupt nature which he was 
born with, and which we possess, had its way, and now 
he was ready to be reasoned with again ; nor did he 
require to be approached by some great personage in 
order to be reached. He listened to his servants once 
more. Good advice, no matter whence it came, was 
never lost on him. They showed him how unwise it 
was for him to dictate in an affair of this kind. He 



STORY OF NAAMAN, AND ITS LESSON. 343 

saw that he had been marking out a coarse of proced- 
ure in his own mind, and that he had been expecting 
the prophet to follow that course step by step. Hence 
his disappointment and the wound to his vanity. He 
knew that the leprosy was upon him. It had not 
troubled him much as yet, but it was steadily making 
progress in his s^^stem. He had done wrong ; his 
treatment of the Divine message was very inconsid- 
erate and foolish. Certainly one who could cure that 
terrible malady ought to be allowed to do it in his own 
way. " I will obey him ; I wiU forget my expecta- 
tions. I will cease demanding some great, some mys- 
terious, some incomprehensible thing ; I will follow 
the simple prescription ; I will go and dip in Jordan 
seven times, since it is my only hope." 

Oh, how grateful was that Syrian lord when he re- 
turned to Elisha ! He had lost all his anger ; he had 
forgotten all about nice points of etiquette. He could 
not go home till he had seen the prophet and poured 
out his thankso^ivinsfs. What did he care for methods 
now, since the object was accomplished? He was 
ready to fall down at Elisha's feet and be his servant ; 
he would gladly stay in the land of Israel, and become 
a Hebrew by adoption. But the king of Syria could 
not spare his chief captain : Naaman must return. 
Yet he will renounce idolatry ; he will worship Rim- 
mon no longer. " The Lord forgive me that I must, 
as a loyal servant, attend my prince when he goes in 
to bow before false gods. And since your country 
cannot be my country, let me load two mules with 
earth taken from before your door to carry home with 
me, that I may look on it daily, and have it placed 
about me at my burial, — thus showing to all men 
that I have yielded my heart at least to the God of 
Israel." 



344 SERMONS. 

No doubt you have anticipated my object in refer- 
ring to tbis passage of Old Testament history. There 
are points in it which bear a close analogy to your 
own case, if you have not yet found a Saviour. 

We are all the subject of a spiritual leprosy, and 
the business of life is to obtain deliverance from that 
malady. The manner in which we are to do this is 
set forth most distinctly in the Scriptures, and it would 
be plain to all men if they acted up to their convic- 
tions promptly. 

The way of salvation seldom perplexes a man when 
he sees it for the first time presented. It is because 
he delays ; it is because he has a natural reluctance to 
the duty ; it is because he mingles with it much that 
is extraneous and speculates about it, and compares 
different modes of stating it, and supposes that other 
people's experience must be his experience, — that he 
becomes confused and discouraged. Has it not proved 
so in your case, my hearer? In boyhood, at your 
mother's knee, or at some other point equally sacred, 
you remember that the question of religious duty 
came distinctly before your mind. You saw just 
what it was : nothing in it puzzled you. You could 
have attended to the matter without any bewilderment, 
but you had certain childish schemes afoot which you 
saw it would interfere with, and so you postponed it. 
Since that time you have read and heard a great deal 
on the subject of religion : sermons on the sovereignty, 
decrees, and providence of God ; on the nature of re- 
generation, repentance, and faith ; on human depravity, 
— the agency of the Spirit, what God does, what Christ 
does, and what man does, in the work of salvation. 
You have heard a gTeat many persons relate their ex- 
perience ; and there was always something marvelous 



STORY OF NAAMAN, AND ITS LESSON. 345 

in it, some sudden illumination, some voice from 
heaven, some upspringing and overflowing peace of 
soul. You have read religious biogTaphies, and ac- 
counts of remarkable conversions, in religious papers. 
And you have forgotten all along that these were ex- 
ceptional cases ; that the very fact of their being made 
public proved their uncommonness. They were not 
examples of the great mass of conversions. Hence 
the influence of all these things upon you, while good 
in one respect, was in another respect very injurious. 
AU this various reading, and hearing, and speculating 
served to keep the general subject of duty to God 
before you, but at the same time you fell into perplex- 
ity ; you lost that clear idea of what it is to be a Chris- 
tian which you had in boyhood, and became entangled 
in a thousand non-essential inquiries. Will you not 
admit that you have mapped out a certain experience 
in your own mind ? You have anticipated the way by 
which God would lead you into His kingdom. " I 
shall have so much conviction of sin," you have said ; 
" I shall feel thus and thus toward God and Christ, 
and shall have such and such experiences of comfort, 
joy, and peace." And now you are waiting to have 
these fancies, for they are in a large part fancies of 
your own mind, made good to you. You have marked 
out a course, in your imagination, for the Spirit to take 
when He comes to save you. And hence you are un- 
willing to accept any aid which seems to come through 
a different channel. You visit the sanctuary again and 
again. You are like Naaman at the door of Elisha, 
willing to be saved, perhaps anxious to make your 
peace with God. But your anticipations are not met ; 
you do not feel as you expected to ; no great and new 
light flashes into your mind; you hear a few plain 



346 SERMONS. 

duties prescribed which seem very much like drudgery. 
And so you are disappointed, offended, or disheart- 
ened. You go away and come again; and still you 
do not find the marvelous experience which you had 
looked for. And so you plod on through the weary 
months, lost in a wilderness of misgivings and anxie- 
ties. 

Now, my hearer, are you willing to be led out of 
that tangled path? Will you leave those side ques- 
tions and those cherished ideas as to how God must 
save you, if he saves you at all ; and will you come 
out into open ground and consider what this matter 
of religious duty is when stripped of all that is non- 
essential ? This is your first step. You must throw 
away all your anticipations of what it is to be a Chris- 
tian, and stand waiting for God's direction. " Lord, 
what wilt thou have me to do ? I now give up my 
foolish imaginations. I have been prescribing a course 
for thee, rather than yielding myseK to be led in such 
a way as thou shouldst choose for me. I have been 
looking for mysterious changes and for sudden ecsta- 
sies ; but they have not come, and therefore I have 
sat still and have been vexed and discouraged. And 
now I am determined to come up to this question of 
religious duty as to a' new question ; to view it as I 
did in childhood, before it had become involved in a 
maze of human theories." Having placed yourself in 
this attitude, my hearer, let me try to bring the sub- 
ject before you in the simplest form possible. 

There are just two things for you to do in becoming 
a Christian, and one of these is simply preparatory to 
the other. You must see that you are opposed to 
God, and you must yield yourself up to God. The 
former of these steps is usually called conviction, and 
the latter submission. 



STORY OF NAAMAN, AND ITS LESSON. 347 

Let us see if you have not the conviction. This 
word "conviction" is one that has troubled you a great 
deal. It is a technical term, and there are many such 
words and phrases in constant use among Christians. 
You hear about saving faith, about coming to Christ, 
about casting yourself on the Saviour, and about sub- 
mitting to God. The expressions all have a meaning, 
but you fail to perceive it. The changes have been 
rung on them so long, that to your ear the sense has 
dropped out of them. They are hollow and lifeless. 
The person who uses them seems to mean something 
by them, but they convey no idea to your mind, and 
hence you deem them unintelligible, and he thinks you 
obstinate. Now it is somewhat so with the word " con- 
viction." It contains an idea ; it is used to designate 
that preparatory step which you take in becoming a 
Christian. But much that is merely adventitious is 
associated with the word in your mind. You have 
heard it used in various relations ; you have heard 
persons speak of deep convictions, of terrible, soul- 
harrowing convictions, and you are waiting till some- 
thing of this kind shall happen in your experience. I 
do not deny that there often are such experiences, 
where the heart has not as yet submitted to Christ. 
But they are not common : the great majority of be- 
lievers have had to besfin the Christian life without 
them ; they come at an advanced stage of the journey, 
much more naturally than at the beginning. God 
does smite some down with these convictions, as he 
did Saul of Tarsus, but no man has a right to look for 
them, much less ought any to delay repentance for 
want of them. They are not necessary in order that 
you may perform your religious duty intelligently. 
The conviction which you have already is deep enough 



348 SERMONS. 

to serve as a basis of action, of immediate action. You 
know that the great work of your life is not yet ac- 
complished. You are not ready to die ; you are not 
ready to meet God in judgment. And why should 
you require any more conviction ? God will not force 
you into His kingdom ; you must go in yourself, if at 
all. He has made you free. You see that you have 
not yet done the work; God shows you by His Spirit 
and truth that you have not; and now, if you wait 
till He shall do something more for you before you 
consent to do anything for yourself, you tempt Him 
to take from you the chance of salvation. How was 
it with Naaman ? Did he wait for some terrible devel- 
opment of his leprosy before applying for help ? Did 
he say, " I know that this disease is upon me, but it 
does not trouble me much yet. I can still attend to my 
duties and enjoy life very well ; and therefore I will 
not try to rid myself of it till it fills me with intoler- 
able pain " ? He was too wise a man to reason thus. 
The danger was apparent to him, and that was enough ; 
he took prompt measures to escape it, not waiting for 
some fearful torment to urge him on. How is it with 
yourself, when you find a troublesome soreness in 
the lungs, and begin to fear lest the fatal disease of 
our coast should fasten itself upon you ? You know 
your danger, and that knowledge is sufficient ground 
for you to act on. Do you wait for the disease to 
become very painful? Do you say, ''I shall not be 
convinced of my danger till every breath becomes a 
groan and every motion a torture " ? You have no 
difficulty of this sort. You do not ask at what steps of 
the disease other people have sought relief, or whether 
your symptoms correspond in all respects to theirs. 
It is your danger ; it indicates its presence in its own 



STORY OF NAAMAN, AND ITS LESSON. 349 

way ; you know that it is there, and without waiting 
for any more conviction, you go for the remedies as 
promptly as you can. So should it be in the matter of 
your duty to God. You are conscious that that duty 
has not yet been performed. This is a sufficient basis 
for action. Why are you not as wise in spiritual 
things as in temporal things ? Is a leprosy or is con- 
sumption more to be dreaded than banishment from 
God ? Will you act for this life as soon as your sus- 
picions are awakened ; and must you feel the terrors 
of despair before you will consent to do anything for 
the endless life ? You have as much evidence of your 
sinfulness as you need to have ; and now if you wait 
for more conviction, you grieve the Spirit, you tempt 
God to swear in His wrath that you shall not enter 
into His rest. But this is not all. The danger is, that 
those convictions, instead of ever becoming greater, 
are constantly becoming less. Have you not found it 
so already ? Does truth affect you as much as it once 
did ? Are you as easily impressed by the solemn 
providences of God as formerly ? Have not the obsta- 
cles in the way of repentance, which were once slight, 
become broad and mountainous? Sin is a peculiar 
disease in this respect. It is stupefying, it puts one to 
sleep. The more you have of it, the less of conviction 
may there be. You are waiting for that voice which 
warns you to repent, to come nearer and ring more 
loudly in your ear. But it is growing fainter, it is de- 
parting, and if you cannot yield to it now, what will 
you do when it has died away in the distance ? A 
dim light is shining on the path ; you could enter it 
and trace it if you would. But you say that you must 
have more light ; and while you thus sit still, making 
claims on the mercy of God, daring to demand that 



350 SERMONS. 

He should give you more light before you use what 
you have, the duskiness of which you complain is fast 
deepening into a rayless midnight. 

We conclude therefore, my hearer, that in your case 
the preparatory work is accomplished. You have all 
the conviction you need ; as much, probably more, 
than you will have at any future time. Nothing 
stands between you and the great, essential thing 
which you are to do in becoming a Christian. God 
requires of you instant submission. I use this word 
for two reasons. It expresses the whole of your duty, 
and it is a word which often puzzles you. Let us see 
if we cannot understand just what it means in your 
case. 

Mark, first, that it is submission to God. You 
must go back of all human theories ; back of what I 
say, and of what any other man says. You must take 
the work into your own hands, and arise and go for- 
w?.rd to God with it. It is at the foot of His throne 
that the new life of faith begins. To bring you to 
this point is the object of all gospel sermons, of all our 
exhortations, of every prayer that we put up on your 
behalf. These means of grace line the road to the 
mercy-seat on either hand ; your back is toward that 
seat ; and it is their office to turn you around, away 
from themselves and from everything else, to God. 
As soon as your attention is drawn from these and 
fixed solely and entirely on Him, and He hears you 
say, " Not my will but thine be done," He will meet 
you and fall on your neck and own you as His child. 
But you say, " Shall I not use the means of grace, the 
Bible, prayer, and religious instruction, and find my 
way to God through these ? " Certainly you should 
use them ; but the act of submission should come first. 



STORY OF NAAMAN, AND ITS LESSON. 351 

You can make that surrender instantly. You can do 
it while the present moment is passing. You know 
that you can say honestly and with all your soul, 
" From this moment onward it shall be the great pur- 
pose of my life to obey the will of God. Here am I, 
Lord ; what wilt thou have me to do ? " But you 
are afraid, if you do make this entire surrender, that 
you shall not carry out your purpose. You shrink 
from the first step, lest you should fail in some of the 
subsequent steps. But do you make the matter any 
better by hesitating ? Do you not fail of them as it 
is ? Which is wisest, — to lose the whole certainly, 
or to make sure of the first one, and thereby get an 
opportunity to take the others? And now perhaps 
you have another difficulty. You could utter this 
now : you could say from the bottom of your heart, 
" At this point in my life I enter God's service ; " 
but it seems to you much like taking a leap in the 
dark. You do not see the way as clearly as you like ; 
you want to know first what it is that God would have 
you do. But this is wrong ; it is like Naaman's fault. 
God says, " Make that vow to me." But you say, 
" No ; point out the path to me, and then I will think 
of the vow." Are you afraid to trust God ? Will 
He tell you to do anything that you are not able to 
do ? Are you not perfectly safe in saying, " Lord, I 
here covenant with thee to do just what thou shalt 
require of me, though as yet thou hast not shown me 
one of thy commands " ? No matter how much in 
the dark you are ; how little you know of the Divine 
will. You must submit first, that is, place yourseK 
under God's direction, utterly at His disposal ; and 
then it will be time for you to learn His wishes and 
obey them. Do you see anything obscure or irrational 



352 SERMONS. 

in this ? It may be very different from what yoa 
have expected ; but why should you therefore turn 
and go away offended ? You have had a revelation of 
God's will all your life. No matter how much or how 
little you know of the contents of the Bible. Before 
you open it again, yield yourself up to it ; have a sol- 
emn determination to live as it shall tell you to live. 
You are a child ; and your Father, speaking in that 
book, calls you to Him. But you have refused to go 
to Him till He should state what He wants of you. 
This He will never do. You may read the Bible, but 
you will not understand it till after the surrender of 
yourself to it. Do this. Be not afraid to trust your- 
self in God's hands ; and then He will make known 
His wishes ; and you shall find that His command- 
ments are all just and for your highest good. This is 
the starting-point. Here you must begin. You may 
have tried to set out from some other point ; and may 
have been as much enraged as Naaman was, when told 
to make an instant surrender of yourself to the Divine 
control ; but there is no other way under heaven, 
given among men, whereby you may be saved. In 
all your darkness, in all your confusion and bewilder- 
ment, whether you have much or only a little convic- 
tion, dropping your preconceived theories and notions, 
you must take this stand of absolute submission to the 
will of God, and then go on to learn what that will is. 
Here I might stop ; for it is in the performing of 
this act, in this placing of himself entirely at God's 
direction, that the sinner passes from death unto life. 
But let us follow him a little way into the kingdom of 
heaven. You have taken the Bible and said : " This 
contains the will of God, whom I am to obey the rest 
of my life. Now I open this book with such feelings 



STORY OF NAAMAN, AND ITS LESSON. 353 

and purposes as I never had before. What it tells 
me to do I will perform, and what it tells me to re- 
frain from doing I will avoid, and what it tells me to 
believe I will believe with all my heart ; and if ever 
there are two courses of conduct before me, and I am 
in doubt which one to take, this book shall decide the 
question for me. I may have been wont to think that 
certain amusements were harmless ; but now I will 
bring them all to this master, and if I find that it con- 
demns them, either by its letter or by its spirit, I will 
drop them ; if it tells me to keep away from certain 
places, I will keep away from those places ; if it tells 
me to avoid certain companions, I will abandon their 
society. As soon as it tells me to have a place for se- 
cret prayer, I will consecrate such a place. If it says, 
' Go into the social ilieeting and strengthen God's 
people with your sympathy,' I will obey the direction. 
If it bids me seek out impenitent friends and urge 
them to do as I am doing, I will hasten to those 
friends. Should I discover that I ought to confess 
Christ before men, I will do so promptly and fear- 
lessly. Some of these duties may be hard for me ; 
my soul may recoil from them ; they may cause me to 
quake with alarm, and to feel that all the world is 
frowning on me : but they shall be performed, even to 
the cutting off of a right hand, or to the plucking out 
of a right eye ; for I rely on God to help me, and He 
has said, ' As thy day is, so shall thy strength be.' 
Whatever dispositions I have, which God here pro- 
nounces wrong, I will strive to subdue ; and those in- 
ward feelings and motives which this volume com- 
mends, I will cherish and cultivate all my days." 
This, my hearer, is the second form which submission 
takes. Having placed yourself at the direction of 



354 SERMONS. 

God, you do not stop. You begin to learn what His 
commandments are, and as fast as you learn them you 
obey them. You did not know those commandments 
before you gave up your will to His, though you had 
perhaps read and studied His word for years. You 
did not have the Holy Spirit then, and hence the 
Bible was a dead letter to you. God never gives 
Him to any but His children, and you are not God's 
child till you make that first great surrender ; and 
even then you will not have Him except as you ask 
for Him. In answer to your earnest petitions only 
will He come and make the Scriptures plain, and 
take of the things of Christ and show them unto you, 
and lead you into all truth, and conduct you onward 
in the way of your duties. Have you begun this 
work, my hearer ? Then you have reached the point 
where Naaman stood after his servants had persuaded 
him to obey the prophet. Though you have turned 
from these duties of the Christian life hitherto, and 
have gone away in a rage as often as you were told to 
set about them, your anger has at length subsided. 
You have given up your will to God's. You are in 
the way to the river. Your heart says, " Not what I 
will, but what thou wilt. Show me thy way, O Lord, 
teach me thy paths. Give me thy spirit, that I may 
understand what I read ; and that which I read I will 
obey, though it crush my proud nature to the dust." 

There is a third form of submission also, which you 
need to consider briefly. It has reference to that joy 
and peace which the new convert anticipates. I fear 
that too much is made of these. They are no part of 
your duty, but. are blessings which God holds in His 
hand. He has promised them to you if you obey 
Him; but He is a sovereign. He will withhold them 



STORY OF N A AM AN, AND ITS LESSON. 355 

for a time if He pleases, and give them when He 
pleases. He may shed them upon you suddenly and 
in large measure, or they may come so gradually as 
not to be perceived for a long time. If you hear a 
new convert express great delight, remember that 
your experience is not to be tested by his. They that 
compare themselves among themselves are not wise. 
Let your whole soul be consecrated upon that which 
God gives you to do, leaving peace or trouble, joy or 
sadness, to come how and when and in such measure 
as God shall choose. Having done that which is de- 
clared to be the condition of forgiveness, believe that 
God is as good as His promise, that you are forgiven, 
that your pardon is sealed on high, and that you shall 
have the witness of it in God's own time and way. 
The best evidence you can have that you have passed 
from death unto life is the fact that you are striving to 
keep the commandments of God. 

And throughout this life-long struggle you will have 
one great relief. Christ, the ransom for all your sins, 
your substitute in the court of heaven, will never fail 
you. When you find yourself yielding to temptation ; 
when you detect sinful motives rising within you ; 
when you feel almost discouraged, and fear that you 
shall never be able to rise above your iniquities, you 
can say, " ' I know that my Redeemer liveth.' Jus- 
tice does not look on me, but on Him. These failures 
shall not cause me to despair ; for His blood cleanseth 
from all sin. I will never lose heart ; I will struggle 
onward ; I have made some progress ; I deplore my 
sins ; the duties which I have failed in I will yet 
strive to perform. For there He stands ; He loves 
me. He helps me. He redeems me out of my iniqui- 
ties ; and when I awake with His likeness I shall be 
satisfied." 



COMPLETED LIVES. 

And so we went toward Rome. — Acts xxviii. 14. 

Men often long and pray for certain objects, and 
hope or even expect that they shall one day possess 
them, while they have no conception of the hardship 
and suffering which the attainment of them involves. 
This is one secret of the many disappointed and un- 
happy lives which we find. It is one thing to dream, 
and quite another thing to make good your dream. 
We imagine for ourselves victories in the future, with 
no thought of the hard fighting by which alone we can 
win them ; we fancy ourselves learned, or powerful, or 
renowned, but our hearts fail us in the very first steps 
of the journey by which alone the coveted height may 
be reached. If to wish and long and pray for good 
things were all the same as to gain them, there would 
be no beggars in the world but only princes, no wicked 
people but only righteous and pure, none unhappy 
but all satisfied and blessed. God hears our prayers, 
but that is no true prayer which does not take into 
account the means by which it is to be answered. 
You cannot truly say that you pray for a harvest if you 
do not plough the land, and sow your seed and water 
it. So all human wishes are utterly vain if they end 
merely with the wishing. Two of Christ's disciples 
were once dreaming of sitting, one on His right hand 
and the other on the left, in His kingdom. But He 
instantly withdrew their minds from the glittering 



COMPLETED LIVES. 357 

prize to the hard process by which it was to be gained. 
" Can ye drink of my cup, can ye be baptized with 
my baptism?" said He. You dream of glory in my 
kingdom, that is, but are you able to go through the 
terrible discipline by which alone that glory can be 
yours? The stern truth which Christ here uttered 
enters into all life, and the sooner we accept it, and 
begin to act upon it in all our dreams and hopes of 
future success, the better for us. Alas for us if we 
think that the high objects to which we aspire can be 
gained in any other way ! You would like to succeed 
as a mechanic, an inventor, a teacher, a merchant, a 
lawyer, a miner, a doctor, an agriculturist ; but do you 
know what that wish of yours means ? Is the coveted 
thing coming to you of itseK at your idle call ? How 
bitter the disappointment in store for you, if you 
think so ! Ask the men who are just now doing 
such wonders with the element of electricity whether 
they have toiled or not. Toiled ! They have grudged 
the hours which they gave to sleep, and their minds 
have been so intent on the one object they were pur- 
suing that other things long ago ceased to interest 
them. Read a little book lately published, called 
" The Blessed Bees," if you would know what inten- 
sity of thought and prolonged devotion are necessary 
to the highest success, even in the matter of supply- 
ing the market with honey. It is a book which reads 
a most useful lesson to every young person who would 
succeed in any undertaking. You envy the rich man 
his mansions and his warehouses, or ships or facto- 
ries, or banking-houses. But while you are doing 
that, and before you let another murmur escape you, 
ask yourself if you are able to bear the self-denial, 
the long years of unremitting labor and of tedious 



358 SERMONS. 

study and thought, by which he has attained his pres- 
ent position ? You think it a fine thing to be a great 
statesman, a profound scholar, an astute and far-seeing 
diplomatist, a leader of armies, a ruler of kingdoms. 
But what do you think of the long and severe strug- 
gle of preparation which must go before everything 
of that sort ? Is this painful discipline a fine thing 
to you ? Certainly not. But until you are willing to 
accept it, and bravely enter into it with an enthusiasm 
which at length makes you love it, you may as well 
drop any hope of rising above the common level. 
The successful artist will tell you this while you are 
wishing that you might be a painter or sculptor. The 
renowned poet or musician will repeat the admonition. 
Wherever you go or look, all about you from the 
higher levels of human life, you will hear the unan- 
imous verdict, that if you would achieve success, you 
must accept its conditions. You are not born success- 
ful, nor do you have success thrust upon you ; the way 
only is open, and whatever your dream or hope may 
be, it will never be made good if you fear the dust 
and flints and the rugged steeps before you. 

Now we know, dear friends, that this teaching is 
true enough in all our earthly concerns. It does us 
no good to see the upward way and to long to be in it, 
while we indolently keep on in the downward course. 
And what is true of all earthly life is also true of the 
new life in Christ Jesus, as He showed James and 
John in the words I have quoted. We must drink 
the cup if we would gain the kingdom. We must lose 
our lives if we would save them. We must be buried 
with Christ if we would have part in His resurrection. 
We must be crucified with Him if we would also reign 
with Him. Nor let us think that what we must under- 



COMPLETED LIVES. 359 

go for His sake is only some sharp and sudden stroke. 
There is life-long struggle, ceaseless vigilance and 
labor before us, if we would fulfdl any hopes we may 
have of honoring Him and His kingdom. In vain do 
we approve the law as holy and just and good, while 
we yield to the motions of that carnal mind in us 
which would bring us into captivity to the law of sin 
and death. In our very desire to be holy as God is, 
there is a willingness, so long as the desire is honest 
and sincere, to go through any hardship and toil which 
the satisfying of that desire may involve. This is the 
condition of all inward growth in Christian character, 
and of all outward achievement for Christ. If we 
aspire to nothing, then it is perfectly natural that we 
should sit still and do nothing. But if we have aspira- 
tions, even these will do us no good, they will only re- 
turn upon us in disappointment and remorse, if we 
shrink from the toils and sacrifices which they involve. 
And the magnitude of the work we would do for 
Christ measures the amount of hardship and labor we 
should be willing to go through. If we wish to reap 
but sparingly, we need sow only sparingly ; but if we 
would reap bountifully, we must also sow bountifully. 
The effort which you put forth in Christ's name, what 
you do and give and endure, must be proportioned to 
the greatness or the height of the object you would 
gain. If you wish to be a bright example of Chris- 
tian discipleship, as we all do at one time or another, 
then you must shrink from nothing which lies in the 
way to your object. You must not be discouraged 
by the greatness of the way; must not faint when 
the journey seems to you very steep and very long. 
Remember it is in vain that you hope and aspire, in 
vain that you wish or pray that you may do some 



360 SERMONS. 

great thing for Christ, while you are unwilling to sub- 
mit to the conditions by which alone your hope may 
be fulfilled, your aspiration met, your wish gratified, 
your prayer answered. Your dream of eminent ser- 
vice for Christ will come down in reproaches on your 
head, and fill you with wretchedness and despair, if 
the price which you must pay for its fulfillment seems 
to you greater than you can afford. We hear of days 
which tried men's souls. My dear friend, the day 
which tries your soul is that in which you see a chance 
to do some noble thing for Christ, and the question is, 
Will you accept the conditions of that blessed work ; 
will you dare to take the course in life which leads to 
it, to give up the ambitions and submit to the losses 
which lie in the way to it ; or will you turn from the 
heavenly vision down into the tempting path where 
Christ never is, and in which you can do no work for 
Him? 

Our text, describing the final stages of the last 
journey of St. Paul, may serve to remind us how he 
met this question, the trying question of every life. 
" And so we went toward Rome," says his friend and 
attendant Luke, though perhaps Luke did not realize 
that those were hours of thanksgiving to Paul. He 
was about to see the highest aspiration of his life 
fulfilled. Yery soon after he became an apostle, the 
city of Rome began to fix his attention. He fre- 
quently spoke of it, and expressed the wish and pur- 
pose to visit it. His missionary travels were con- 
stantly bringing him nearer and nearer to it. He 
was glad to fall in with persons who came from Rome 
and make them his friends ; and he would have gone 
to the imperial city much sooner than he did, had 
not Satan hindered him. In the whole course of St. 



COMPLETED LIVES. 361 

Paul, there is a lesson to those of this day who would 
give the gospel to the world. Though he despised no 
opportunity however small, he sought the chief cen- 
tres of intellectual, social, and commercial life in which 
to plant the seed of the kingdom. In Syria he la- 
bored especially at Antioch, in Cyprus at Paphos, in 
Asia Minor at Ephesus, in Macedonia at Philippi, in 
Greece at Corinth. And when he failed to get a hear- 
ing at any of these places, or was mocked and driven 
away, as often happened, he turned only the more 
eagerly toward Rome. All the other cities which he 
visited, though capitals of provinces, were but provin- 
cial ; Rome overshadowed them. Rome was therefore 
the true centre from which to work ; if she could be 
converted to Christ, the whole world would be speed- 
ily Christianized. To preach in Rome, to build up a 
strong church there, and there to suffer and die, so 
that his name and work should become identified with 
the Roman name, was in his day a great matter. He 
saw this, as we in our day see how great a thing it is 
to have the leading nations of the earth believers in 
the religion of Christ. We must not neglect these 
great centres, which are all the time sending currents 
of influence throughout the world, but must give them 
our chief concern, as Paul gave his to Rome, if we 
would see the world evangelized. We may notice a 
threefold development of the religious life of St. 
Paul. First, there was his personal consecration to 
Christ, which cost him a sore struggle. This involved 
the putting away of his deep prejudices and cherished 
ambitions. A series of long and fierce encounters 
with himself and the world lay between him and the 
object on which his heart was set. If he had been 
unwilling to fight these battles and to make the sacri- 



362 SERMONS. 

fices required of him, his fond desire would have done 
no good. To gain his end he was willing to make 
himself a pupil of one of the despised sect whom he 
had been persecuting. He had the courage to drop 
his ambitious plans, and devote three years to the 
study of this whole subject. You may long to be a 
Christian, dear friend, but you will never be one till 
you can accept the conditions which the step involves. 
St. Paul had to do this, and so must every other one 
who makes Christ his Master. You cannot serve two 
masters. You cannot serve God and Mammon. It is 
a great and blessed thing which you yearn for, when 
you yearn to know that Christ is your Lord and God, 
to know that He is leading you, that you are hearing 
His voice all the time and obeying it, that His wisdom 
is ordering and controlling your daily life. But to 
enter into this experience requires the laying down 
of something on your part ; not so much, perhaps, as 
St. Paul laid down, yet something. And here is the 
question which tries your soul : Can you cast behind 
you whatever stands in the way of that Christian ser- 
vice which you would begin ? 

A second outgrowth of the religious life of St. Paul 
was his consecration to the preaching of the gospel 
among the Gentiles. His first consecration was the 
personal giving of himself to Christ to do whatever 
Christ should have for him to do. But here is a con- 
secration to a specific work in life. Here Paul finds 
his mission in the world and gives himself away to it. 
As the springs and streamlets on the mountain sides 
or among the hills gradually gather themselves into 
one channel till they make the deep and strong river 
sweeping on to the sea, so his first religious im- 
pulses, and hopes and longings, grew together into this 



COMPLETED LIVES. 363 

one all-engrossing purpose. The providence of God 
showed him that it was to be his work in life to give 
the gospel to the Gentiles. His whole soul rose within 
him at this prospect ; he accepted the office, whatever 
it might cost him, and thereafter he ever magnified 
his office. And we know a little of what it cost Paul 
to be the apostle of the Gentiles. As in even becom- 
ing a Christian he left his own natiou, made them his 
enemies, gave up earthly hopes, so in accepting this 
apostleship he still further shut himself out from his 
Judaizing brethren, and exposed himself to unknown 
perils among strangers and idolaters. Whether he 
had counted the cost or not, yet nothing ever moved 
him to give up his mission. He was man enough to 
know that so great a work could not be done without 
hardship and suffering, and he was willing to do and 
endure whatever might be in store for him in it. His 
difficulties with Peter, and with Mark and Barnabas, 
with nearly all the leaders in the Judaean church, did 
not turn him back. If he had faltered at all because 
some of his brethren could not see as he saw, or be- 
cause of the innumerable trials which came upon him, 
it would have been in vain that he cherished his high 
hope concerning the Gentiles : he could not have said 
at the end of his ministry, "I have fought a good 
fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the 
faith ; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of 
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, 
shall give me at that day." 

But besides these two consecrations under Christ, 
that for a general obedience and that for a specific 
mission, St. Paul had an aspiration or yearning some- 
how to identify himself and his work with the great 
city of Rome. He wished to plant the gospel in the 



364 SERMONS. 

very heart of the known world, from whence its power 
would be felt to the remotest bounds. If this had 
been mere idle dreaming, or speculation, or sentiment 
with him, he would have never got to Rome ; for the 
trials which he went through in reaching the city 
of the Csesars were of the severest kind. Of course, 
if he had chosen to go as a common traveller or 
sojourner, he would have had no trouble. But he 
would go only as the ambassador of Christ, the stand- 
ard of the cross lifted up in his hands, to plant in the 
imperial capital that gospel of the Kingdom which 
was hated and feared. It was no holiday work to 
which the apostle aspired. His aim was a very high 
one. Think a moment ; nay, we cannot now under- 
stand what was then involved in bearding the mighty 
world-power which the gospel came to conquer in its 
most central and proudest stronghold. The man who 
would do that must have no earthly treasure which 
he could not willingly sacrifice, — no country, no 
home, no kindred or friends. Health, safety, comfort, 
and ease must all go. He must not count his life 
dear to him. Neither the perils of the sea nor of the 
land must have any terrors for him. And for all 
this, lying in the way to his supreme desire, St. Paul 
was ready. He feared it not, but bravely went 
through it from the bitter beginning to the bitter end. 
First his religious life had rooted and grounded itself 
in Christ, and then it had shot up into the noble stem 
and branches of his mission to the Gentiles ; and now 
it did not falter, but showed its heavenly origin and 
spirit, when the time had come for it to put forth the 
consummate flower. Before setting out on his last 
journey to Jerusalem, the apostle distinctly announced 
his hope and purpose. Thus far, his desire to see 



COMPLETED LIVES. 365 

Rome had been thwarted, but now the yearning had 
growTi so strong in him that it would not be thwarted 
any longer. Every other hope must bend to the ful- 
fillment of this. His determination, and the dangers 
which it was known to involve, gave its deep pathos to 
the parting with the elders at Miletus. All along on 
his way eastward he found his brethren full of appre- 
hension. They felt that evil of a most serious nature 
was somewhere to befall him, and they naturally asso- 
ciated it all with Jerusalem and the hostility of the 
Jews. Hence their efforts, wherever he stoj)ped on 
the way, to dissuade him from going forward. But 
he told them that he went bound in the Spirit, know- 
ing what things should befall him. And when some 
besought him with tears not to go on, he said, " What 
mean ye to weep and to break my heart ? for I am 
ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusa- 
lem for the name of the Lord Jesus." Yet he knew 
he was not to die there. A greater testimony than 
that for his divine Master awaited him. He had an 
inward assurance that somehow he should see Rome, 
and he let the Lord, who had whispered this glad se- 
cret in his heart, lead him. He let himself be arrested 
by the Jews and then rescued by the Roman garrison, 
and then carried to^Caesarea, and then brought before 
Festus ; and then he let himself be sent a prisoner 
to Rome, though he might have been set at liberty if 
he had not appealed to Caesar. Ah, dear friends, St. 
Paul knew what he wanted. He took advantage of 
a law of the empire by which every accused citizen 
might claim to be tried in the presence of the em- 
peror. And so, though chained and guarded, he got 
to Rome. He had succeeded, he had triumphed, he 
had reached the highest prize in life to which he had 



366 SERMONS. 

aspired ; had reached it by longing for it, by thinking 
about it, by laying his plans to reach it, by dreading 
no trial which the fulfillment of his hope involved, by 
watching the providence of God and letting that lead 
him on toward his object. We have but a brief refer- 
ence to the closing years of his life in Rome. Yet 
I think we can safely say that he here did the most 
important work of his whole career, thus justifying 
all his earnest desires. From this point his inspired 
messages went out to all the churches, and he be- 
gan a work which did not stop till the whole Roman 
Empire had bowed to the name of Christ. There is 
probably no other spot on the face of the whole earth 
where the Christian traveler feels the spell of St. 
Paul's name and work so much as in that room in 
Clement's house in which he lived and wrought. 

Thus gloriously did the life of St. Paul make good 
all its promise, dear friends, by his acceptance of the 
conditions which God had appointed. Thus only can 
you or I do anything for Christ, or our lives bloom 
out or amount to anything among men. In vain do 
we gaze on the House Beautiful at the top of the hill 
if we forget that it is the Hill Difficulty, and that we 
must climb it for ourselves. God will go with us up 
it, but what of that if we refuse to go? You may 
have in your heart some such aspiration, dream, or 
hope as that which carried St. Paul at last to Rome. 
If you have, whatever your vision of service for Christ 
may be, cherish it, be obedient unto it. Do not merely 
amuse yourself with it till it degenerates into weak 
sentiment, but look at it sharply till it defines itself in 
your mind, till you know what it means for you, and 
how you are to make it good. It is your calling of 
God, perhaps your high calling in Christ Jesus, and 



COMPLETED LIVES. 867 

woe unto you if you refuse Him wlio speaks from 
heaven. Or you may have no divine clream of this 
sort ; you may not even perceive any special mission 
for you among men. But though your religious life 
lack both the blossom and the stem, yet the root of 
the whole matte'r may be in you ; and this is after all 
the great thing for us, as it was for St. Paul. He 
first yielded himself to the obedience of Chiist, and 
in the way of this obedience he found his mission and 
its glorious ending. In proportion as the service of 
his life grew nobler, his sacrifices and toils were more 
trying. But it tried him when he first bowed to the 
name of Jesus of Nazareth ; nor was he without trial, 
he had much of it, before the more special purposes 
of his life were formed. Very likely there is no mis- 
sion, no bright victory such as will fix the gaze of men, 
in store for us. There may be. We know not. Such 
things are not to be desired unless God has appointed 
them. The most commonplace and uneventful life is 
the best if He sends it. That it is what He appoints 
is the great thing. He knows, and He knows what is 
best. A simple life of obedience to Christ, with no 
sweep or splendor to it, but plain and lowly and un- 
admired of men from first to last, is the most blessed 
and precious for us when we have learned to accept it 
as what God gives. It is the multitude of such lives, 
blooming and ripening throughout the world, which 
are to finish up the work of such exceptional lives as 
St. Paul's. They are to make the businesses of the 
world honest, the governments of the world just, the 
social and domestic intercourse of the world sweet 
and pure. Let us ever be found doing this, dear 
friends, and then, if Christ means us to undertake any 
special mission for Him, He will show it to us ; if a 



368 SERMONS. 

bright crown is to be put on our earthly service, His 
providence, carefully watched and followed, will bring 
us to it ; and whatever we may be or fail to be in the 
sight of men, our patient continuance in well-doing is 
carrying us upward along the path by which the most 
heroic and royal lives must ascend ; iand over us, as 
over them, are the same Divine hands stretched out, 
and the same words of blessing spoken, " Ye are the 
salt of the earth, ye are the light of the world." 



THE PRIVILEGE OF SUFFERING. 

Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to 
try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you ; but rejoice, 
inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that when His 
glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. — 
1 Pet. iv. 12, 13. 

No wonder, dear friends, that the Bible is the Book 
of books ; that those who have really found out and 
felt its meaning, only cling to it with a more deter- 
mined love the more it is spoken against, knowing 
in their hearts that its words are the words of their 
all-knowing and sympathizing Father. Think or say 
what we will to the contrary concerning human life, 
its chief feature is that it is a season of suffering and 
sorrow, and this feature of our lives the Bible every- 
where reflects, as the lakes in the mountains reflect the 
forms of the sombre overhanging cliffs. That blessed 
divine Book would not be the long record of trials 
and blood and tears which it is, were not such indeed 
the actual history of the human race. Make the most 
we can of the bright and joyous hours which come in 
our earthly lot, they are after all but whirling eddies 
on the dark stream ; the only true joy is that which 
springs from our faith in a nobler and better life be- 
yond the present. "These sayings are faithful and 
true," you feel in your heart, as you read of the sin- 
of Adam and Eve, of their expulsion from the garden 
to toil among briers and thorns ; " this is all true to 
my experience, to every man's experience," as you 



370 SERMONS. 

read of those before the flood, whose hearts departed 
from God, as you see how the great patriarchs strug- 
gled and sinned and groaned. " It is true, true to all 
we have seen or read of history ; " the long discipline, 
terrible overthrows, and final scattering of Israel ; the 
hard lives and bitter deaths of the apostles ; the per- 
secutions which chased the early church from city to 
city. We look upon the cross of Jesus Christ lifted 
up before us, that most painful of all sights the earth 
has witnessed, in which the meaning of the whole 
Bible is concentrated, and we say that nothing else so 
profoundly as that reflects back to itself human life, 
whether in the race or the individual. And still there 
is nothing weak, nothing cowardly or merely senti- 
mental, in all the Book. It only dares to tell us the 
truth, telling it as tenderly as bravely, with the pur- 
pose of making us brave to do and suffer in hope of 
the glory to be revealed. 

This is the great spirit which comes out in our text. 
Peter had suffered, and God had taught him to rejoice 
in his sufferings, and this divine lesson he is trying 
to make over to his brethren who are tasting the bit- 
terness of the life which now is. " Kejoice, inasmuch 
as ye are partakers of the sufferings of Christ," he 
writes, echoing the high voice of all Scripture, the 
great and heroic words of the suffering Saviour Him- 
self. Pain and grief, the common lot, the lot espe- 
cially of the godly in Christ Jesus, are not a calamity 
but a glorious privilege. This is the truth which he 
announced to the afflicted of his day, and which 
should still be proclaimed to all whom the Lord visits 
with trouble and sorrow. We fail to understand it. 
Our Lord says He will give us rest if we wiU come 
unto Him ; but the more we follow Him the more we 



THE PRIVILEGE OF SUFFERING. 371 

are troubled on every side. To be connected wnth 
Him in any way was not a passport to earthly peace, 
but to hardship and pain. It was a fatal thing to the 
infants of Bethlehem that He was born in their little 
town. A sword pierced through the soul of Mary, 
whose glory it was to be His mother. The trials com- 
ing on the twelve whom He chose to be with Him were 
so great as to bring one to the betrayal, another to the 
denial, as to make them all at one time forsake Him. 
They were imprisoned, killed with the sword, crucified 
for His sake, made to drink of His own cup and be 
baptized with His baptism. Yet He said to them, He 
says to all the millions who still suffer, He says to any 
here who think their fiery trials a strange thing, " My 
peace I give unto you." Ah, dear friends, it is not in 
the body, in the earthly experience, it is in the soul 
and spirit, in the life of heavenly communion which 
we live by faith, that our Lord Jesus gives us rest and 
peace. So it is all most blessedly true which He says 
when He invites us to come unto Him, though in the 
world we still have tribulation like all others, and it 
may be more than any others. 

St. Peter does not exhort us to mirth, as though all 
life were a frolicsome holiday ; he recognizes the ele- 
ments of pain in our lives, but he glorifies that suffer- 
ing by declaring that it is a holy privilege. Not only 
does the apostle thus transfigure pain, speaking the 
language of all Scripture and of the cross of Christ, 
but there is something within us which says Amen to 
his words, and the best thought and literature of the 
world is ever reechoing this divine truth. It is not 
the books which delude us with the idea that life is a 
frolic, or which, on the other hand, only sentimental- 
ize over human sorrows, it is those which both paint 



372 SERMONS. 

the picture with sombre colors, and at the same time 
teach us to look straight at it with fearless hearts, 
which the world does not let die. 

Mrs. Browning, in her tragedy of the Exiles, shows 
that she understood the Bible view of human trouble, 
where she pictures the life of Adam and Eve after 
their fall, making them brave to enter upon their hard 
lot, penitent but not despairing, Eve who had misled 
Adam now comforting him, feeling the wondrous 
truth that somehow their pain was exalting them, re- 
joicing in it, and, with womanly triumph over it, say- 
ing, " My sorrow crowns me." In a poem describing 
the blindness of Milton, but written by another poet, 
he is represented as saying to his God, " This dark- 
ness is the shadow of thy wing ; beneath it I am 
almost sacred." What some of his enemies pointed 
to as a sign of God's anger against him he rejoiced in 
as an uplifting favor, bringing him " within the radi- 
ance of the sinless land," where he saw " resplendent 
visions," and heard " the flow of soft and holy song." 
The mighty Shakespeare is never mightier than while 
representing those who suffer most as blessed above all 
men by their sufferings. He has no nobler characters 
than those which he paints as born but to suffer. It is 
into the lips of one of these that he puts the words, — 

" To me, and to the state of my great grief, 
Let king's assemble, for my grief 's so great 
That no supporter but the huge firm earth 
Can hold it up : here I and sorrow sit ; 
Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it." 

The great authors who thus write, and whose names 
the world binds to its heart, do but take up and pro- 
long the apostolic voice of triumph : " Sorrowful yet 
rejoicing," " having nothing yet possessing all things," 



THE PRIVILEGE OF SUFFERING. 373 

" dying and behold we live," " counted as sheep for 
the slaughter," yet the life of Clirist reigning in our 
mortal body. No doubt there is a special blessedness 
in the distress which comes upon men through their 
devotion to Christ and His righteous kingdom : yet 
the suffering which is apart from this, which comes on 
good and bad men alike in the natural course of things, 
is to be received from the Father of Lights as one of 
His good gifts ; merely bodily pain and weakness tak- 
ing us away from the active duties of life, and hold- 
ing us fast while we see our strong neighbors marching 
to the conflict, are not to be despised, but we are to 
glorify God on that behalf. This seems like a hard 
thing to do while our poor body is one mass of torture, 
but it has been done by many servants of God, not- 
ably by St. Paul, who gloried in his infirmities ; but 
above all by our Lord Jesus, who would not be kept 
from going to Jerusalem to suffer. It is the lesson 
which our text reads ; and we can learn it, the strong 
Spirit of God helping, finding with the pain which 
smites us to the dust a joy which lifts us to the very 
heavens and right hand of our Father. 

When I say that the suffering which is our common 
lot on earth is a privilege, I do not mean that it is in 
itself a good thing. No privilege is this. The only 
thing which is a good in itself for us is the holy and 
righteous character which makes us one with Christ. 
Suffering is a good in the sense that it gives us an 
opportunity to gain this character. No privilege is 
anything but an opportunity ; and if any privilege be 
abused, it becomes to us, not a good, but an evil. Thus 
all the events of our lives come to us, each one con- 
taining two possibilities, blessing us if we take it the 
right way, but cursing us if we take it the wrong way. 



374 SERMONS. 

Wealth is a privilege which makes those who know 
how to use it noble and honored, but which blights 
and destroys those who consume it on their own lusts. 
Whether one is born to it or achieves it, it is no good 
in itself to him. What is he doing with it? is the 
question which tells whether it is exalting him or cast- 
ing him down. So of all our possessions which we 
are wont to call the good things of this life, — knowl- 
edge, genius, the power to think and feel and sym- 
pathize, the skill to plan and contrive, and the strength 
and courage to execute. They are all but privileges 
or opportunities. We can do ourselves harm or good 
with them. They are a vantage-ground to either the 
higher or lower nature in us. They are an unsheathed 
sword which will only wound us if we know not how 
to take them, or which, being well in hand, will bless 
us only as we struggle on the side of righteousness. 

Now suffering and weakness, which come somewhat 
to all, though to some far more than others, bring with 
them this double possibility. They may either make 
better men and women of us, or thoroughly spoil us. 
I think some of the most selfish, exacting, patience- 
trying people we ever meet are those to whom this 
privilege of suffering has been given. Their pain is 
a terrible temptation, and a little experience makes us 
see how easily they may yield to it. We all naturally 
have a large charity for the faults of those called to 
suffer, and this charity is greatly increased by a little 
experience of suffering. The impulse of sympathy 
makes us try to anticipate their wants : we keep watch 
that they may sleep ; we lend them our strength to 
save theirs ; the inquiry in the morning and on the 
street, as their friends meet them, is for their health 
and welfare. For them the easiest chair, the sunniest 



THE PRIVILEGE OF SUFFERING. 375 

window, the best place at the fireside, the choicest del- 
icacies of the table. They are not permitted to min- 
ister, but are ministered unto by all about them. Now 
one sh6uld not be encouraged in a spirit which resists 
all offers of kindness. We show ourselves amiable by 
accepting help when we really need it. Yet this very 
habit, proper enough and necessary at times, will de- 
generate into a selfish care for his own comfort if the 
invalid does not watch himself. His thoughts nat- 
urally tend to be about himself alone, while he has 
little thought for the comfort or rights of others. He 
may become a tyrant in his weakness almost without 
knowing it ; nlay come to feel that there is really no 
exhaustion or weariness in any one but himself; be 
angry at any lack of alertness or sign of languor in 
his attendants ; be petulant and ungratefid when the 
best they can do for him does not happen to suit his 
humor. Such is the path by which those who suf- 
fer much in body, or in any way which makes them 
dependent on the kindness of others, may go down 
and down till they become the most wretched and 
unlovely of beings. Let us not forget, dear friends, 
those of us who are called to suffer much in any way 
in this present world, that we are exposed all the time 
to this evil temptation. Our friends have rights as 
well as we ; and if there be nothing else with which 
we can repay their loving attentions, let us at least 
show them, by our calm and patient way of taking 
what God sends, that there is nothing in suffering 
upon which they, too, may not calmly smile should it 
at any time be their lot. As many as get this victory 
over the pain with which they must struggle will be- 
gin to learn why it is spoken of as a precious thing in 
the Bible ; they will not wonder why Peter told his 



376 SERMONS. 

brethren to rejoice in it ; they will easily say Amen 
when they hear it called a privilege rather than a 
calamity. We must have high moral and spiritual 
ideals before us, which we are struggling to realize, if 
we would see how sorrow and weakness and pain may 
help us in our struggle. 

Assuming that we have this disposition, this mind 
of Christ which alone can make anything a real good 
to us, our suffering, besides uplifting and refining us, 
brings us into a truer sympathy with our fellow-crea- 
tures about us. One of your first surprises, whenever 
you suffer in a particular way, is to find how many 
others are suffering in a similar way. Not till you 
are a mourner yourseK do you begin to learn that the 
world is full of mourners ; not till you actually fall 
under the power of this or that or the other disease 
do you suspect how many victims it has all about you. 
Here, again, is an opportunity to widen the sphere of 
your sympathy. As your health made you able to re- 
joice with them that rejoiced, so your infirmity helps 
you weep with them that weep. Your suffering will 
do this blessed work in you, finding you full of the 
spirit of love, or, finding you selfish and careless of 
the good of others, it will make you a misanthrope. 
Though our pain and weakness are such aids to a sym- 
pathetic spirit in us, they are not necessary to it. As 
the most selfish of people sometimes are the infirm, so 
the most tender and self -forgetting are the strong and 
vigorous. We sometimes say of a person, " Ah, he 
cannot feel with me in my trouble, having never ex- 
perienced it himself." But such a reproach may be 
very unjust. That very friend, who has never known 
your affliction in his own person, may be most sympa- 
thetic with you ; and the one who has suffered pre- 



THE PRIVILEGE OF SUFFERING. 377 

cisely as you do may be wholly indifferent. You can 
be sure of people in these things only as you know that 
the spirit of Jesus Christ dwells richly in their hearts. 
The greatest Sympathizer the world has ever had was 
One who did not actually endure some of the sorest 
trials incident to our lot. True, it is said of our Lord 
Jesus that He is touched with the feeling of our infirm- 
ities, and knows how to succor us when tempted, having 
been tempted Himself. But this must mean His won- 
drous divine sympathy with us, for He never Himself 
underwent all that any of us are ever called to undergo. 
He enters into our sorrow as the mother enters into 
that of her child, only with infinitely more tenderness. 
It is said of Him that there was no sorrow like His sor- 
row, that He bore our sins and carried our sorrows, He 
was the suffering Son of God on earth ; yet He did not, 
save by this mysterious sympathy with us, suffer many 
things which we suffer. We do not read that He was 
ever sick in all His life, or that He felt any physical 
pain till it was inflicted upon Him within a few hours 
of His death. He was hungry and weary and thirsty, 
yet was from fii'st to last well and strong. How happy 
the first thirty years of His life in the sweet enclosure 
of the hills I It was the shadow of the cross, beginning 
to darken around Him after His baptism, which made 
Him a Man of sorrows. He never sinned as we all 
have, and hence He could not, as we do, taste the bitter 
fruits of sin : it is ever the great mystery of His divine 
sympathy with sinners, something incomprehensible to 
us, that He should feel Himself forsaken of God. He 
never felt as we do the infirmities of age, or laid wife 
or husband, or child or parent, or brother or sister, in 
the grave. Yet this strong Saviour, exempt from so 
much which we must suffer, sympathizes with us as 



378 SERMONS. 

no one else ever has or can. We need Gethsemane 
with its bloody sweat, the mocking and scourging in 
Pilate's hall, the via dolorosa, the lacerated frame 
on the tree, that we may understand what our Lord's 
sympathy with a suffering race is. That cross mea- 
sures the world's sorrow, tells us what human life 
really is, and how fully our blessed Saviour sympa- 
thizes in all its griefs. This final agony on Calvary 
is our key to the heart of Christ, but it does not make 
that heart, — that great heart of unspeakable tender- 
ness and love. The infinite sympathy was there be- 
fore the world was, so that He could be said to have 
been slain before the foundation of the world. What 
our Lord is, not what was inflicted on Him, makes 
Him so enter into our sufferings as to be the greatest 
of all sufferers. 

But we, dear friends, are not like the infinite Son 
of God in our natural power of sympathy. Though 
we have Christ's spirit in us, we have it only according 
to our measure ; and when we suffer, it is more than an 
assurance of sympathy with other sufferers, — it widens 
the sphere of our sympathy, enlarges our capacity 
to sympathize. Thus it is, while we are yearning and 
struggling to be such as our Lord was, that all sor- 
rows or pains or tribulations coming to us are like the 
bright angels in the patriarch's dream. We welcome 
their visits, for they bring us more opportunity, more 
blessed privilege of being such as God's own Son wa=;, 
in a world of weakness and grief and frailty. Not 
only does our tenderness go out through a wider circle, 
but those who suffer see in us new assurance that we 
suffer with them, and thus we manifestly enter more 
and more into the fellowship of Christ's sufferings. 
This was what St. Paul especially longed for : " That 



THE PRIVILEGE OF SUFFERING. 379 

I might know Him and the fellowship of His suffer- 
ings." And of one of the early Christian fathers it 
is related that he liad so thorouglily learned the bless- 
edness of suffering, that when his Lord Jesus came 
to him in a dream, asking him what he would have in 
return for a long life of hardship and suffering, he 
eagerly exclaimed, '' Lord, let me have more suffer- 
ing." Yes, dear friends, it is our suffering, rightly 
taken and rightly used, which makes us understand 
the old Latin proverb, vincit qui patitur (he conquers 
who suffers). Suffering as the followers and co-heirs 
of Jesus Christ, we find our way as conquerors to the 
heart of the world. The world sees in us, somewhat 
as in our Lord's cross, a picture of its own spiritual 
condition. Just to the degree that we are weak we 
become strong, though poor we make many rich, our 
darkness is the light of the world, and the life of 
Christ reigns in our dying bodies. 

Why should we not rejoice in our pain, and greet 
it as the most welcome of guests, while it is thus 
bringing us into a closer and truer union with the di- 
vine Friend of all men ? while it is thus revealing to 
us, and helping us more and more to enter into, the 
world's sorest needs ? 

But let us not forget that the outward affliction can 
bring us no profit save as it finds in us the heavenly 
spirit. The feeble have advantages which the strong 
do not have, yet all have advantages ; and as we see 
more and more the true nature and objects of life, we 
shall find that our God is, in His dealings with us, an 
impartial Father. He gives some of us opportunities 
to grow like His Son in one way, others opportunities 
to grow like Him in other ways. No one can be like 
Him in all respects, but all can be like Him in some 



380 SERMONS. 

respect. It is necessary that some should be strong 
and others weak, some sick and others well, some 
workers and others sufferers, that some should speak 
and others keep silent, some minister and others be 
ministered unto, in order that there may be in our 
Lord's kingdom that variety of spiritual beauty which 
there is of natural beauty in the material world. All 
is lost upon us, and no good gift which the Father of 
Lights sends will be a real good to us, while no soul of 
goodness lives within us ; but if we are the friends of 
Christ, following Him in the regeneration, then, come 
what may of what is called good or ill in our earthly 
speech, it will but carry us upward and forward in the 
blessed way of all real good, making us sure each 
night, as we look back to the morning, that our loving- 
Lord has walked with us in the way, and that our 
tent is pitched " a day's march nearer home." 



WE ALL DO FADE AS A LEAF. 

(Isaiah xiv. 6.) 

The sacred volume furnishes many touching de- 
scriptions of the frailty of human life. What can be 
more vivid than the following : " Thou carriest them 
away as with a flood ; they are as a sleep ; in the 
morning they are like grass which groweth up. In 
the morning it flourisheth and groweth up; in the 
evenino- it is cut down and wi there th " I And ao^ain : 
"He knoweth our frame ; He remember eth that we 
are dust. As for man, his days are as grass ; as a 
flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind 
passeth over it and it is gone ; and the place thereof 
shall know it no more." Hardly less pathetic than 
this is the language in which Job so often bemoans 
his fate : " Man that is born of a woman is of few 
days and full of trouble. He cometh forth as a 
flower and is cut down : he fleeth as a shadow and 
continueth not." Speaking of the mighty, he says : 
" They are exalted for a little while, but are gone and 
brought low ; they are taken out of the way as all 
other, and cut off as the tops of the ears of corn." 
Equally sad is the reflection of the apostle Peter: 
" All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the 
flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower 
thereof falleth away." 

Among these many images of our frailty, none is 
more striking than the one suggested by the text. 



882 SERMONS. 

Especially at this season of the year, when vegetation 
is sinking into its annual tomb, — when every sound 
is pensive, when decay sits on all the products of sum- 
mer, when the very light has grown pale, and an un- 
seen sadness fills the air, — we feel the justness, as 
well as pathos, of the scripture which tells us that 
"we all do fade as a leaf." The aged feel it, to 
whom the fields and woods are now a picture of the 
autumn of life. The afflicted feel it, who have laid 
down their best-beloved to waste with the leaves and 
flowers. The suffering feel it, as with painful step 
they totter along the pathway of time. Fading away ! 
this is the sombre but wholesome truth which all na- 
ture is now setting before us. It may be to many of 
us an unwelcome truth, but it forces itself upon our 
notice unasked. We cannot walk out into the mead- 
ows, or stray through the forests, or look up at the 
sky, or listen to the hum of business, without being 
reminded of it. The thoughtful, brooding spirit of 
nature steals upon us before we are aware ; the most 
frivolous find themselves slipping involuntarily into 
trains of pensive reflection. But this decay, exhibited 
on so vast a scale around us, is not an isolated and 
barren truth. It contains a lesson. " We do fade." 
Man, viewed as a mortal being, is not exempt from 
the general doom. He is bound into a common broth- 
erhood with the most fragile objects in nature. The 
Scriptures point out this connection, and trace its 
analogies, and enforce the lessons which it suggests. 
They remind us, while we are looking abroad on the 
sickly face of Autumn, that we are part and parcel in 
this fading scene. We are no exception to that law 
of decay which rests upon all earthly things. They 
fade and we fade with them. Nor is this the end of 



WE ALL DO FADE AS A LEAF, 883 

the lesson : " Wo all do fade." The youngest are 
doomed to this process no less than the oldest ; the 
strongest as well as the weakest ; the vigorous equally 
with those whom disease has smitten. If there be 
any whom the bhght has not yet touched, it is cer- 
tainly waiting for them. The fairest cheek must lose 
its bloom, and the brightest eye its lustre. Chemis- 
try, perhaps the most curious of the sciences, reads a 
humiliating lesson to any who trust in their youth, 
beauty, or strength. It shows them that the elements 
which compose their bodily frames can all be found 
in the clods of the valley. When our friends lay us 
in the grave, they do literally commit " earth to earth, 
dust to dust." We were all taken from the ground, 
and are all returning to the place whence we came. 
There is still another thought, suggested by the text, 
which it may be profitable for us to consider more 
especially at this time. Not only do we see decay 
around us, in which we all without exception partake, 
but this general decay observed in nature bears an 
instructive analogy to that which is going on within 
ourselves : " We all do fade as a leaf." 

This analogy teaches us, first, that we fade rapidly. 
How brief the space which has intervened between the 
birth of the leaves and their death ! We can hardly 
realize that autumn has indeed come. It seems no 
longer ago than yesterday that we saw the earth car- 
peted and curtained with the living colors of spring. 
If we shut our eyes, the gorgeous expanse returns. 
We again overlook the fields waving with verdure, 
and walk in the odorous groves, listening to the early 
songsters. One glance abroad, however, dissipates 
this bright illusion. The " sere and yellow leaf," the 
receding sun, and the chill, searching winds, remind 



384 SERMONS. 

us that the time of the singing of birds is gone, — 
that we have reached the sober months, " the fall 
of the year." In this short time — so short that it 
seems like a dream — vegetation has passed through 
the process of growth ; has lived and is now about to 
die. The genial sap stole up into the boughs of the 
oak and the maple. The buds started forth from 
every joint, swelling and bursting with increase of 
life. The leaves spread themselves out in the breeze 
and sunshine, roofing the forest and clothing every 
tree in green garments. All was fresh and radiant 
with gladness ; and if we had then, for the first time, 
looked on the gorgeous display, we would not have be- 
lieved that it was to vanish so soon ; that, after a few 
short weeks, the dead leaves would strew the earth, 
and the trees stand like skeletons against the cold, 
gray sky. Nor has all this verdure lived to share in 
the general decay. Much of it has perished prema- 
turely. As we walked beneath the pine-trees, even 
in spring and early summer, their leaves fell thickly 
around us. The work of decay went on with that of 
growth ; in the midst of life there was death. The 
sun, with its hot rays, dried up many a leaf before its 
time. Greedy fires have marched through the forest, 
consuming every green thing. Groves without number 
have been swept away by the woodman's axe. Win- 
ter, as if coming back to be revenged for the loss of 
his sceptre, smote multitudes of the early buds. In 
field and orchard and garden, the caterpillar and can- 
ker-worm have aided the work of death. Enough, 
however, has been spared for the final meal ; and in 
this last ruthless descent of the Destroyer, we forget 
his previous doings. Now, do we say that it is other- 
wise with us ? that we live longer and our life is more 



WE ALL DO FADE AS A LEAF. 385 

secure ? Let us look. The human race is a tree ; an 
evergreen, if you please. But the evergreen sheds its 
leaves as often as the deciduous tree. The only differ- 
ence is, that the processes of growth and decay go on 
in it simultaneously. Young leaves are constantly 
taking the places of the old ones ; and hence we do 
not notice their departure. Just so in society : for 
when one man drops away another steps into his po- 
sition ; and thus Death, by filling every gap as soon as 
he makes it, conceals his work. Once in about thirty 
years the tree of humanity sheds its leaves. Those 
which fall before reaching this age vastly outnumber 
those which live beyond it. And if here and there a 
few keep their hold for threescore or even fourscore 
years, they are nevertheless soon cut off, and they fly 
away. There is no such thing as long life on earth, 
though we sometimes say of a man that he has reached 
a good old age. The Bible, accommodating itself to 
our poor way of reckoning, uses similar language. 
But after all, we go swiftly to the tomb. We feel 
that the patriarch who had lived to be a hundred and 
twenty years old was right when he said to Pharaoh, 
*' Few and evil have the days of the years of my life 
been." A century will not seem much to us when 
we look back upon it from eternity. They have no 
dial-plates there ; no days and nights, no autumns, 
no periods, but one endless duration. How much of 
our early life has faded from memory ! -There are 
months and seasons which seemed long to us then, but 
they are as nothing now. If we strive to recall them, 
we find that they have utterly gone from us. And 
many an hour which we have enjoyed since the leaves 
last appeared has fled forever. But the shortest of 
those hours, if compared with this present life, is 



886 SERMONS. 

longer than a century compared with the eternal ages. 
When we begin to float away on that shoreless ocean, 
time, like some little island, will soon sink out of our 
sight. We shall esteem it as less than nothing, and 
vanity. The past will disappear like a bird flying 
away into the blue ether. It will vanish like a swift 
ship on the distant rim of the sea. We shall learn 
how frail we were ; that the measure of our days was 
very short ; that life was indeed no more than a span. 
This analogy teaches, secondly, that we fade imper- 
ceptibly. The leaves are not withered all at once, but 
gradually. Though they live but a few months, yet 
their life ebbs away with an even flow. We cannot 
see the exact moment at which their color begins to 
change. That there is change we know well, but we 
cannot watch the process as it goes on. We look at 
the leaf, and while we look it is fading, but some- 
how the work of death escapes us. Its decay is rapid, 
as was its growth, and, like that, is imperceptible. This 
fact holds good, even to a greater degree, in our own 
case. We can mark the fading of the leaves by com- 
paring their hues at short intervals. The experience 
of many seasons has taught us to expect their death. 
The decay to which they are subject is something 
external to us. But we fade by an inward process. 
Our eyes are turned away from it ; it is silent and 
deeply hidden. If any of us have lived to be old, 
they cannot mark the point in their life at which age 
began to steal upon them. The step was so stealthy 
and noiseless that they did not detect it. They know 
that they have changed, but it has not . been a change 
which they could trace from day to day. Their com- 
panions have changed with them ; and this serves to 
heighten the illusion. Instead of feeling that they 



WE ALL DO FADE AS A LEAF. 387 

have grown old themselves, they are apt to think that 
young people appear more youthful than formerly, — 
that the broad space between them and the rising 
generation is caused by children being more childish 
than they once were. They slip away from the shore 
so smoothly that they think they stand still, and that 
it is the land which is receding. While the stream of 
life bears them on, they are unconscious of motion ; 
and its enameled banks seem to them to be gliding 
away behind them. They are deceived, just as we all 
are about the earth's motion. We know that it re- 
volves, but we cannot realize the fact. Everything 
on its surface moves with us, and hence there is no 
means of marking our progress. We sweep through 
the air almost with the speed of lightning ; but all 
objects around us keep their positions with respect to 
each other, and therefore we cannot see that we move 
at all. If we look up to the heavens, we say that it is 
they and not the earth which revolves. It is the sun 
which rises and sets, and which goes from solstice to 
solstice. It is the constellations, not ourselves, which 
turn nightly in the sky. Thus it seems to us ; but we 
know that we are deceived. And in like manner we 
move on toward our graves. We sometimes say that 
we are getting near our lowly bed ; but then we do 
not realize what we say. Death seems as far off as 
ever. We are still laying plans, and thinking to our- 
selves that to-morrow shall be as this day. If we were 
told that our life would close before another morning, 
the announcement would surprise us, just as much as 
a like announcement would startle the joyous child. 
We do not perceive the approach of the chiU mes- 
senger. He steals over us like some magnetic sleep. 
The twilight deepens with so even a step that we do 



888 SERMONS. 

not believe the night is drawing near. Ah, how Death 
plays with his victims ! He mocks us all alike, doing 
his work so stealthily that we ever imagine him at a 
distance ; letting us fill up the full term of human 
life, and then hurrying us away in such an hour as we 
think not of. 

This analogy reminds us, thirdly, that we fade 
utterly. The display of colors which the forests now 
make is indeed charming. Neither spring nor sum- 
mer has an^^thing to be compared with it. The land- 
scape seems to have been converted into one vast 
painting, on which the artist has lavished all his taste 
and ingenuity. Every color and every shade of the 
many colors seem to have been poured out around us 
in most costly profusion. The deep crimson, the pur- 
ple, the delicate pink, the pale and the rich golden- 
yellow blend with each other, and with still other dyes, 
into all imaginable tints, mingling often into pictures 
the most gorgeous, and of inimitable beauty. Such 
is the painting which God hangs out before us, by the 
side of which all that human genius can do looks mean 
and contemptible. But He will in a few days with- 
draw the picture. We must look while we have a 
chance, for the exhibition will soon be over. The 
many-hued leaves are dropping down, and the rain is 
beating them to the earth, and soon the frost will 
stiffen them, and the snow cover them out of sight. 
They will not reappear in the spring, but their places 
will know them no more. They will turn dark, and 
crumble, and lose their distinctness of form, and min- 
gle together in an undistinguished mass. The wild- 
flowers will spring up through new-made loam, and the 
ploughshare will turn it up to our view ; and as we 
walk over it, we shall have no remembrance of the 



WE ALL DO FADE AS A LEAF. 389 

leaves which once played so beautifully in the setting 
sun. 

And is it so with man ? It is indeed so with mortal 
man ; with the life which floats away on the sound of 
the passing bell. There is no respite, and there are 
no exceptions. Think not that the lovely forms, which 
we have laid do\vn in the grave since the birds last 
sang, will moulder alone. Other leaves are falling. 
We shall soon be by their side. The spade will ere 
long round the top of our lowly bed, and that will 
be the end of us as inhabitants of earth. Exhorta- 
tions to repent will not trouble us there. We shall 
hear no more rebuke of our sins ; there will be no 
more Sabbaths to break or sanctify, no duties to per- 
form, no works of mercy and love. They who come 
after us will forget our looks and our deeds ; yea, our 
names will utterly pass away ; and other generations, 
as frail as we, will come and go, and it will be with us 
as though we had never existed. A few friends may 
cherish our memory. We may, by our generous labors, 
cause those who come after us to recall our names 
gratefully through many ages. But this does not 
alter our fate ; for we know that the monuments shall 
crumble, that literatures shall perish, and that the 
scroll of history itself shall vanish away. And is 
there no means of averting this doom ? Must man, 
who so thirsts for immortality, lie down and rise not 
till the heavens be no more ? Such is indeed the sen- 
tence which we have incurred by our sin. There is 
nothing in nature which teaches otherwise. This is 
the sad conclusion to which man's reasonings lead. 
If there be not some other One greater than we, some 
blessed Potentate who hath imm.ortality in Himself, 
we see no chance of escape. '' By one man sin entered 



390 SERMONS. 

into the world, and death by sin ; and so death hath 
passed ujDon all men, for that all have sinned." This 
is the decision, — gloomy and terrible, but final. And 
here we close the book of Nature, gladly looking away 
from her stern teachings, to see if there be not some 
comfort for us in that other volume which has come 
down to us from the Father of Lights. 

Ah, Nature ! thou hast told us the truth ; for, as we 
glance along the blessed leaves, we read that in Adam 
all die. But thou hast not told us the whole truth ; 
for we also read that in Christ all shall be made alive. 
Thou didst show us the gloomy front of the cloud, but 
didst not turn its silver lining out to our view. Thou 
hast turned to us the dark side of the picture, on which 
we saw the forms of suffering and death painted ; but 
we have come round to the bright side of it, and, lo ! 
blessedness and life appear. Now we know that there 
is One who doth not break the bruised reed ; who is 
very pitiful and of tender mercy ; who, though He 
remembereth that we are dust, pitieth us as a father 
pitieth his children, and desireth not our death, but 
that we may find life in Him. " In Christ all shall be 
made alive." His blood, poured out in the earth, has 
stayed the progress of decay ; and there shall be a 
resurrection both of the just and of the unjust. Our 
bodies and souls have been corrupted with sin ; but far 
within lies a germ which shall live when they perish. 
This is the image of God, the seed of an immortal per- 
son, in which we shall be raised up at the last day. 
Here, then, we have the whole process depicted ; not 
only the decay, but the renovation. The sentence of 
Nature is not softened, but there is a hope beyond, 
gilding the gloom, which she did not unveil. 

The lesson of humility is still here, and we take it 



WE ALL DO FADE AS A LEAF. 391 

home to our hearts. We have abused and forgotten 
that in us which is to live forever. What we nat- 
urally pride ourselves on is yet frail and fleeting. 
Our glory and honor must be laid in the dust, and the 
worm shall eat them as wool, and our beauty shall be 
consumed. We find no language too strong, no im- 
agery too vivid, in which to paint the frailty of that 
which we now call ourselves. We long to heap epithet 
upon epithet, and add metaphor to metaphor ; for we 
all do fade as a leaf, and the pomp and might and 
excellency of the earth are going down with us to the 
tomb. Make us lowly before thee, O Father, for we 
are crushed before the moth ; and keep us from trust- 
ing in man, whose foundation is in the dust. 

But " he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, 
yet shall he live." We thank Thee for those words, 
Lamb of God, for many of our pious friends have 
already faded and disappeared. They have been taken 
away from our firesides and bosoms ; we call out for 
them, but they do not answer ; their portraits smile 
upon us from the walls ; and we steal away often to 
look at the garments which they were wont to put on. 
And their empty seats, and the silence in the halls 
never broken by their footstep, remind us that they 
are not here. But they have risen ; and they walk 
in white, for they are worthy. We do not know why 
God afflicts us ; but they know, and they are comforted 
concerning us. They know why the good die first, 
while they whose hearts are dry as the summer's dust 
burn to the socket. They know why such as Brain- 
ard, and Lyman, and Henry Martyn were taken away 
so early. They know why Alexander, and Caesar, and 
Tamerlane were permitted to ravage the earth. Pas- 
cal, and Cowper, and Robert Hall are there, and they 



392 SERMONS. 

see at lengtli wliy God afflicted them so in their life- 
time. It is well with our Christian friends who have 
faded. They have faded into the life which never 
fades ; and when they shall be permitted to receive us 
into their white-robed company, their joy will be full. 
And the little ones, too, they are yet alive. You wept 
to see them fade before you durst hardly call them 
your own, for they dropped like early spring-buds ; 
and you gathered them up, and laid them away, sor- 
rowing that you should see their faces no more : for 
you could not understand why Death should be allowed 
to touch those sweet forms which had never been 
stained with sin. But they understand it, though 
they are but little children. They are learning to in- 
terpret and to love the ways of God, and studying 
those mysteries which the angels have a desire to 
know, and looking into plans which baffle the wise and 
prudent of this world. And we thank thee, O Father, 
Lord of heaven and earth, since thou hast seen fit to 
hide these things from us, that thou art revealing them 
unto babes : even so, Father, for so it hath seemed 
good in thy sight. 

But what shall be the end of those who have sinned 
and will not believe ? Ah, my friends I you are fad- 
ing rapidly, imperceptibly, and that which you now 
take delight in will soon have vanished utterly. It is 
not mawkishness in me to tell you this, for it is the 
truth. Nor is it a truth for the sick and weak-minded 
only. It is for you, the strong man ; for you, the 
ambitious and dashing youth.' Your little life will 
soon be over, and you will drop like the frailest leaf ; 
and if you are not in Christ, you will awake to shame 
and everlasting contempt. Nature teaches you this, 
but revelation teaches you how to avoid such a doom. 



WE ALL DO FADE AS A LEAF. 393 

Ye know whither Chi-ist has gone, and the way to 
Him ye know ; but ye will not come unto Him that 
ye might have life. A few more days of hesitating, 
and ye shall die in your sins ; and then where He is, 
thither ye cannot come. And ye shall be as tares, 
which are gathered from among the wheat in harvest 
time, and men bind them into bundles, and they are 
burned. 

Since the dwelling-place of sinful and imperfect 
creatures is so beautiful even in its decay, what must 
heaven be ! God is a being of perfect wisdom, always 
bestowing His care in proportion to the value of the 
things which receive it. This is the argument which 
our Saviour used when He endeavored to comfort His 
disciples. Not a sparrow falleth on the ground with- 
out your heavenly Father, and ye are of more value 
than many sparrows. If God so clothe the grass, which 
to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall 
He not much more clothe you, who are His redeemed 
children? And so, if He has made this house which 
fadeth as a leaf so lovely, He will give proportionate 
beauty to our eternal home. This is a world which 
sin hath blighted, and in which every comely object 
soon passeth away. But see how He has arrayed it ! 
A wilderness of charms still remains. He has built 
it on a foundation of gold and sapphire, and fretted 
its broad blue dome with golden fire ; into its green 
carpet He has woven the lily and the violet ; and He 
has curtained it with the swaying groves, in which the 
robin and the nightingale have their home. He has 
made the human form surpassingly graceful, and 
thrown upon its face somewhat of the light of His 
own countenance. We look abroad, and are amazed 
at the prodigality with which He is now adorning the 



394 SERMONS. 

landscape. What gorgeousness, what delicacy, what 
taste, we see beaming from every hill and field and 
forest, over which the very clouds seem to be dream- 
ing in wonder, and not a nook or corner of which 
escapes the curious sunbeams ! And yet this is only a 
brief exhibition of His power. He will soon change 
its countenance and send it away ; in a few short days 
Nature will be bereft of her glorious garments, and 
present to us only a wide waste of dreary and lifeless 
forms. Who, then, shall attempt to describe that 
world where there is everlasting spring, where the 
leaves do not fade, nor the flowers wither, and where 
we ourselves shall be clothed in immortal youth? 
Thus far we have come in our contemplations, but we 
would not seek to go farther. We pause at this point, 
where even Inspiration lays down her pen ; for eye 
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into 
the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared 
for them that love Him. 



SICKNESS AND ITS LESSONS.^ 

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesns Christ, the 
Father of Mercies, and the God of all comfort ; who eomf orteth us in 
all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them who are in 
any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of 
God. — 2 Corinthians, i. 3, 4. 

How affectionately the apostle treats the word ' com- 
fort ' in this passage ! Like a mother playing with 
her child, which she clings to and cannot let go, he 
clasps it to his heart again and again, drawing it back 
into his embrace as oft as he feels it escaping, and 
caressing it with a fondness which seems farther from 
satisfaction the more it is indulged. The God of 
comfort comforteth us, that we may comfort by the 
comfort wherewith we are comforted. Five times in 
the same breath ! A stream whose fountain-head is 
the God of mercies, whose banks and channel are his 
own tribulation, whose final receptacle is the hearts 
of them that are in trouble ! The one sweet thought 
is so breathed through the utterance, and poured over 
every phrase and syllable, as to make it seem like a 
bunch of asphodel just cidled from the gardens of 
immortality. 

This pastor of the Corinthian church, so far from 
murmuring or repining amid his troubles, " blessed " 
God for them all, "even the Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ," interweaving that " Name of names " 

^ Preached December 13, 1863, upon recovery from a dangerous 
illness. 



396 SERMONS. 

as if to remind himself that no disciple can be a 
sufferer in comparison with the suffering Son of God. 
He blessed God, not on his own account only or 
chiefly, but more especially on the behalf of his 
brethren, who, he considers, are to reap some of the 
richest benefits of his afflictions. So possessed is he 
with the one purpose of being useful to other men's 
souls, that he rejoices in his calamities, not so much 
for any fruit they may bring to himself as for the 
greater fitness they work within him to be a minister 
of truth and consolation. He gloried in his infirmi- 
ties, — his " thorn in the flesh," his stammering- 
speech, his inferior personal presence, — if thereby the 
grace of God might more abound unto any. Was 
he afflicted and delivered unto death? he reminds 
the Christians at Corinth that it was for their sake ; 
" it is for your consolation and salvation." Was he 
brought down to the edge of the grave (apparently 
by sickness) ? he says : " We were pressed out of 
measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired 
even of life ; that we should not trust in ourselves, 
but in God who raiseth the dead." He couples even 
the kindness of his friends with his own suffering, 
and reckons it all as so much good seed sown for 
their advantage, saying, "Ye also helping together by 
prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by 
the means of many persons, thanks may be given by 
many on our behalf." Not loss, but gain ; gain not 
only to himself, but to the church which he served in 
Christ's name, was what he desired, and what he had 
already found, in his affliction. 

How free and unstudied the intercourse of Paul 
with the Corinthians, as brought to view by this scrip- 
ture ! None of that unwillingness to talk about him- 



SICKNESS AND ITS LESSONS. 397 

self and his private experiences, — that affectation of 
modesty than which few things can be more immodest. 
He is all unreserve, childlike simplicity, and open- 
heartedness ; for he knows that there is no bitter feel- 
ing in himself, and also that his most secret thought 
will meet a waiting sympathy in them. None of that 
worst form of egotism, — that pride which is too 
proud to speak of itself, that egotism whose veil is 
silentness, which is found in cautious maturity but 
never in little children, of whom is the kingdom of 
heaven ; none of this in the free-speaking teacher, 
who tells his beloved flock all about " the trouble 
which came to him in Asia," recognizing it as a com- 
mon sorrow both to them and himself, and believing 
that God meant it all for a common blessing. 

Such is the great example under whose protection 
I might stand this morning, while speaking of God's 
dealings with me through the last summer and au- 
tumn, were I not sure that your OAvn welcome of such 
speech will be my only needed protection. 

The first impression one has, upon waking from the 
long delirium of fever, is very wonderful. Conscious- 
ness comes like a stunning blow upon all his sensibili- 
ties ; there is a sudden paralysis both mental and phys- 
ical, and he lies upon his sea of pain almost indifferent 
to his fate, like a ship which some mighty wave has 
struck, leaving it a helpless wreck on the waters. He 
is prostrate, dumb, nearly bereft of sense and feeling. 
Then from this strange stupefaction there is a sud- 
den swing into the opposite extreme. The taste, the 
touch, the hearing, the eyesight, become painfully 
acute. A flower anywhere near is at once identified 
by its strong fragrance, the faintest line of the pic- 



398 SERMONS. 

tures on the walls is distinct and prominent, no whis- 
pering of attendants can be so low as to escape 
detection, and the beating of a child's drum in the 
street is like the rapid firing of artillery. Such is the 
tension of the sensibilities that one look of kindness 
may excite floods of tears, and the smallest inatten- 
tion, whether fancied or real, is often felt as a cruel 
injury. The heart almost breaks with impatience, 
and a feeling of bitter neglect, during the long hours 
which seem to pass between the expression of a wish 
and its gratification. The ice and water are miles 
away from the sufferer ; and he asks, when the bit of 
toast appears, if they had to " raise the wheat " before 
making it. Then succeeds a feeling of awe, as the 
patient becomes strong enough to hear how many 
weeks have dropped out of his life, — when he can 
bear to be told that his recollection of endless wan- 
derings over torrid seas, and of desperate struggles to 
escape from cruel foes and reach a home that seemed 
to fly before him, is only the memory of a dreadful 
dream ; when he may safely learn, though to his utter 
astonishment and against his clearest convictions, that 
certain great events in the world have not taken place ; 
when he first gathers, from various remarks dropped 
around his bed, that he had so far ceased from among 
the living as to be numbered with those who inhabit 
silence. This feeling of awe is for days uppermost 
and oppressive. The invalid resembles soldiers just 
out of battle, sobered into speechlessness by the near 
vision of what they have passed through. He per- 
ceives that his feet have stood within the gates of 
eternity, and that he has looked on the Face which 
few are permitted to behold and live. 

After this season of intense vitality and wonder, 



SICKNESS AND ITS LESSONS. 399 

having become used to its dread experience, the mind 
relapses into a more passive state. Then, as I now 
remember, the luxury of convalescence begins. One 
is so aware of his weakness as to feel it no trial, but 
the rather a pleasure, to be treated like an infant. 
There is just enough of restoration to lie still, and 
breathe, and be moved about, and amused with pres- 
ent trifles. I can never forget this stage of my recov- 
ery. The sick-chamber was as large a world as my 
energies required, the smallest matters completely 
absorbed me, the passing moment was so large that I 
hardly thought of either the past or future. It must 
have been under such an experience that the Psahnist 
said, " Thou renewest my youth ; " that so many have 
said, with Hugh Miller, " After long seasons of sick- 
ness, childhood seems to come again." I found in the 
commonest objects and events a delight before unsus- 
pected. Inspired texts, and fragments of familiar 
hymns, came to me with such peculiar sweetness as to 
excite smiles of pleasure ; and the calm tones of a 
human voice, or any haK-heard strain of music, filled 
me with pure gladness. It was during this experi- 
ence, and as my faculties waxed stronger, that it 
seemed to me I could understand how Richard Baxter 
was moved to wi-ite so sweetly of the Everlasting Rest, 
— how Edward Payson could say, " When I formerly 
read Bunyan's description of the Land of Beulah, 
where the sun shines and the birds sing day and night, 
I used to doubt whether there was such a place ; but 
now my own experience has convinced me of it, and 
it infinitely transcends all my previous conceptions." 
I shall never recall some of the earlier days of the 
autumn just gone, without believing that I may justly 
claim to know how Peter felt in the mount when he 



400 SERMONS. 

said, " It is good for us to be here ; let us build three 
tabernacles, Lord, one for thee, one for Moses, and 
one for Ellas." But Transfiguration scenes cannot 
last always. It is the office of a pious memory to 
preserve them ; to hang them up in the picture-gallery 
of Christian experience, where they shall admonish 
and cheer the toiling believer. With a soul thus 
attuned, and still dwelling apart from earthly dis- 
turbance, you will easily comprehend how much I 
enjoyed on that fair October morning when I sat in 
this pulpit, — having entered no other, nor worshiped 
publicly, save in tents or beneath the open sky, since 
standing here more than a year before, — you will 
judge at once, I say, what sacred pleasure the hour 
afforded me, nor wonder that my heart kept repeating, 
as I listened to the choir and the minister, and felt 
the spirit of the place, " There are no songs like the 
songs of Zion, there are no words like the words of 
Jesus, there is no house like the house of God." The 
clouds and darkness round about me, which had been 
gradually turning out their silver lining upon the 
night of my affliction, now blazed suddenly with a 
celestial splendor, like those floating about Alpine 
summits, of which Professor Tyndall says : " They 
were very grand, — grander, indeed, than anything I 
had before seen. Some of them seemed to hold thun- 
der in their breasts, they were so dense and dark ; 
others, with their faces turned sunward, shone with 
the dazzling whiteness of the mountain snow ; while 
others again built themselves into forms resembling 
elm-trees loaded with foliage. Towards the horizon 
the luxury of color added itself to the magnificent 
alternation of light and shade. Clear spaces of amber 
and ethereal green embraced the red and purple cu- 



SICKNESS AND ITS LESSONS. 401 

muli, and seemed to form the cradle in which they 
swung. Close at hand squally mists, suddenly engen- 
dered, were driven hither and thither by local winds ; 
while the clouds at a distance lay like ' angels sleeping 
on the wing,' with scarcely visible motion. Mingling 
with the clouds, and sometimes rising above them, 
were the highest mountain-heads, and as our eyes wan- 
dered from peak to peak, onwards to the remote hori- 
zon, space itself seemed more vast from the manner 
in which the objects it held were distributed." There 
is a Mont Blanc in Christian experience, and I am 
grateful for the belief that my feet were permitted 
for a little while to stand on its apocalyptic summit. 

But now, as returning health brought me nearer to 
the activities of life, and I beheld the duties which 
must ere long — though not so soon nor so fully as I 
had hoped — be resumed, misgivings began to mar my 
peace. There was a reluctance to undertake again 
the work of a pastor in Boston, — work so manifold, 
and so exhausting, if one attempts it all with a pur- 
pose to do it well. I wondered that I had ever dared 
to try it, and that it had not crushed me long ago. 
This dread, and expectation of failure, became so op- 
pressive that life at times seemed hardly desirable. 
In my ingratitude to God, I murmured that He had not 
permitted me to die, when dying would have been so 
much less painful than it was to get well. Struggling 
against this sinful fear, and gradually subduing it, I 
trust, was the remembrance of God's faithfulness. 
Would He, who had so wonderfully succored me in 
the past, forsake me in days to come ? I knew that 
it is always safe for a man to be where God places 
him, and to go about the labor which God appoints ; 
that the strength will come in the day when it is 



402 SERMONS. 

needed ; that He who gives dying grace will also give 
grace for the life which He marvelously restores ; that 
there can never be any failure, but only victory, now 
and always, to him who makes God's will his own. 
Aiding these suggestions of faith, was the desire to 
be actively associated once more with those whose 
kindness had so abounded to me and mine ; whose 
strong crying unto God had moved His everlasting 
arm ; who had spoken so comfortingly to her whose 
hope was ready to perish ; who had sought out for me 
the choicest gifts of the garden and conservatory, and 
taken care that no want of the sick-chamber should be 
unsupplied ; who took to their own homes those too 
young to see suffering ; who stood, through weary and 
breezeless nights, over one all unconscious of their 
ministering. Gratitude to God for these friends, 
who thus cared for one not a long time their neighbor 
or pastor ; his boyhood passed in a far-off valley un- 
known to fame ; his only church and Sunday school, 
throughout that period, a Christian home ; literally, 
here, a stranger in a strange land : yet coming from 
the wilderness to this far-famed Zion ; venturing into 
such a blaze of intellect and culture as this city is 
renowned for ; preaching the truth as he learned it from 
the Scriptures, in times so likely to make it an offense 
unto many, but listened to, borne with, cheered on, 
and seconded more and more yearly : his desire from 
the first, in the long struggle now sprinkling the land 
with blood, to take such a position and so perform his 
part as to be worthy of the past, and leave a good 
example to the future, not obscuring but honoring, 
and if possible making brighter, that history which 
you as a church so justly revere ; this desire, imper- 
fectly carried into action, shamed by so many greater 



SICKNESS AND ITS LESSONS. 403 

sacrifices, even unto death, as the absence of some 
faces and your mourning apparel remind me to-day ; 
this desire, as I know at length, appreciated and aided 
in the expression, — gratitude to God, I say, and the 
wish not to show a base distrust of those who Lave so 
generously befriended me, are an admonition to be 
persuaded, by this signal experience, to go with alac- 
rity and joy about the duties of the future. 

The lessons of severe sickness are numerous and va- 
rious. Of these I will venture to name a few, which 
seem appropriate to the instructions of the sanctuary. 

1. We should learn from such experiences that our 
life is a treasure which belongs to God. 1 say, we 
should learn, for nothing singular or uncommon has 
happened to me. All who have lived to maturity can 
remember times when God's own hand was interposed 
to snatch them from death ; some hair-breadth escape 
or mysterious deliverance, or a return to health from 
the cold shadow of the grave, when it seemed that no 
human help could avail. I know that God shows His 
goodness more, and may claim a larger gratitude, 
where He has not permitted the calamity to come ; 
but so thoughtless are we that the gift is seldom 
viewed rightly, until, having been despaired of, we re- 
ceive it anew. Especially may this blessed view be 
obtained where one's weakness is so great, and his re- 
covery so gradual, as to withdraw him for a consider- 
able time from distracting afPairs. It is the soul med- 
itating and praying alone, under the canopy of its 
trouble, which sees that the afflicting and the redeem- 
in:;- hand are the same, and which learns to say with 
Pascal, in that memorable prayer : " Grant, O my God, 
that in uniform equanimity of mind, I may receive 
whatever happens ; since we know not what we should 



404 SERMONS. 

ask, and since I cannot wisli for one thing more tlian 
another without presumption and without setting my- 
self up as a judge, and making myself responsible for 
those consequences which Thy wisdom has justly de- 
termined to conceal from me. O Lord, I know that 
I know but one thing; which is, that it is good to 
follow Thee, and evil to offend Thee. Beyond that, I 
know not what is better or worse in anything. I 
know not which is more profitable for me, sickness or 
health, wealth or poverty, or any other of the things 
of this world. This is a discovery beyond the power 
of men or angels, and which is veiled in the secret of 
Thy providence which I adore, and which I do not 
desire to fathom." 

When God takes a life and suspends it over the 
abyss, letting it down into the sides of the grave 
until it disappears from human sight, or drawing His 
dark pavilion around it, and flying away with it into 
we know not what secrecy, — if He then restores that 
life to its place among men, the impress of His owner- 
ship is too plain upon it not to be seen ; it is His, and 
should be devoted to the glory of His kingdom, as He 
has shown by doing with it as He willed. Sending 
back that life, after friends have once yielded it into 
His hands, teaches that He has something still for it 
to accomplish on the earth. Thenceforth it may serve 
no other master, nor engage in any unholy labor. It 
is God's own offering to humanity, as really so as the 
gift of His eternal Son. It is a life sent into the 
world to carry forward His merciful purpose, to be 
the servant of righteousness and holiness, not confer- 
ring with flesh and blood, but ever with the Spirit 
which giveth wisdom. It is a life consecrated to what- 
ever God looks on with pleasure, and desiring no 



SICKNESS AND ITS LESSONS. 405 

earthly inheritance, but content to know that a build- 
ing not made with hands awaits it in the heavens. 

Said Robert Hall, that prince of modern preachers, 
and an eminent sufferer, having just been restored 
from the gates of death : " I wish to bow with the 
deepest submission to that awful, yet I trust paternal. 
Power which, when it pleases, confounds all human 
hopes, and lays us prostrate in the dust." And again, 
writing to the same friend, after a dangerous illness, 
he says : " I am more and more convinced that nothing 
deserves to be called life that is not devoted to the 
service of God ; and that piety is the only true wis- 
dom. But, alas ! how difficult it is to get these les- 
sons deeply impressed on the heart, and wrought into 
the whole habit of the mind ! " Oh, my friends, who 
have at any time looked within the veil, let us ever 
hearken to the voice pursuing us out of that thick 
gloom, saying, " Ye are not your own, for I have re- 
deemed you ; " and may it be our unbroken and full 
consolation henceforth, that, whether living or dying, 
we are the Lord's ! 

2. Severe illness should open to us new views of 
the sympathy of Christ. That sympathy is wonder- 
ful, and to us incomprehensible, — as we feel more 
and more, the more our own sphere of sympathy is en- 
larged. Dr. Chalmers, wishing to show that increase 
of knowledge deepens one's conviction of ignorance, 
drew a white circle on a blackboard and said : " The 
larger you make this circle of the known, the more of 
the unknown will its circumference touch." So, as 
our hearts expand, we become more conscious of that 
Infinite Heart which surrounds us all. We touch 
it with a broader circumference, and look off upon 
it from more advanced points, only to discover that it 



406 SERMONS. 

is without a shore. Each new experience of sorrow 
widens the circle of our sympathy. That trouble, in- 
creasing our magnetic power, draws to us many who 
have experienced the same. There is a larger fellow- 
ship of hearts, and a new discovery of human woe. 

But the tenderest spirit soon learns how little it can 
know or share of the anguish about it ; and so con- 
templates with ever-increasing wonder that sympathy 
which feels all the pains we bear. Though reason 
stands aghast at this truth, yet practically it is con- 
fessed by all Christian hearts. Whenever or what- 
ever we suffer, the words of the Man of Sorrows are 
most powerful to soothe and sustain. If we are 
tempted, we love to think first of all on His tempta- 
tions. If we are desolate. He had not where to lay 
His head. If we are forgotten in any extremity, His 
disciples slept during His agony. If we are avoided by 
a truth-hating world, He passed, " a lonely stranger," 
through life. Gethsemane turns all our shadows into 
morning, and our bitterest crosses are lost and swal- 
lowed up in His. Every other tie may perish, every 
other love prove false, but His is a sympathy that 
never fails. No indifference can chill it, no time can 
weaken it, no sorrow can exhaust or transcend its 
healing power. The woes of all the world are but a 
slight elevation from which to behold a little of that 
love which passeth knowledge. And hence, consider- 
ing the variety of mortal experience, — every life hav- 
ing in it a sorrow which earth cannot heal, — there is 
no hyperbole, but only calm and literal statement, in 
those Scriptures which teach that a Christian hope is 
the pearl of great price, and that all other riches are 
wisely spent in purchasing the riches of a conscious 
and constant fellowship with Christ. 



SICKNESS AND ITS LESSONS. 407 

3. Sickness, attended with delirium for several 
weeks, lias confirmed my faitli in the immortality of 
the soul. 

I speak not now of the resurrection of the body, 
that separate wonder. Of this we find no instance, 
but only a few imperfect analogies, in nature ; and in 
proof of it we must rely on the historic fact of 
Clirist's resurrection, together with His miracles rais- 
ing the dead, and on certain teachings transcending 
reason, given by the apostles as the Holy Ghost 
moved them. The resurrection of the body is a 
solacing truth which Christianity alone brings to our 
notice ; the immortality of the soul is a truth taught 
by reason without inspiration. 

Insanity seems never to have been rigidly defined. 
No prudent person would undertake to say just where 
it begins. Perhaps the wisest opinion we can hold 
respecting it is, that all men are more or less insane ; 
differing not in the fact, but only in degTee, and 
destined to bear the infirmity until death shall be 
swallowed up of life. Some may be afflicted with 
this unsoundness to an extent which renders them 
irresponsible for the time being; in others it may 
amount only to what is called eccentricity, in which 
cases it can and should be controlled by a Christian 
determination. But it is apparent to me now, that 
insanity, while disordering those faculties which con- 
nect us with the outer and passing world, does not 
reach the highest powers of the mind. Reason is not 
dethroned. If her conclusions are wild, that wild- 
ness lies in the impressions which she is obhged to 
take for her premises, not in the logic by which 
she carries them to their results. As a discovering 
faculty, "her looks commercing with the skies," she 



408 SERMONS. 

still recognizes the supremacy of goodness, and brings 
every act reported by the senses to tbat divine ordeal. 
It is in the senses, in that mortal organism which con- 
veys external and conditioned facts to the mind, that 
the disease resides. The judge on the bench decides 
according to evidence ; it is the witnesses that are 
at fault if the verdict be unjust. The insane man 
adlieres obstinately to his conclusions, for he has 
reached them logically, and it is impossible to show 
him that his premises are false. 

Since, then, the disorder is all in the sensuous part, 
and the purely spiritual faculties act as calmly and 
unerringly as ever in their own proper sphere, we 
infer that these are never reached by weakness or 
decay. Exempt from the fate of that organism 
through which they manifest themselves here, they 
abide in undiminished vigor, waiting for that glorified 
body which shall never falter in the service of their 
high demands. The acuteness of a delirious person, 
the desperation with which he pursues his train of 
inferences, his ingenuity in parrying objections and 
marshalling proofs, the indignant surprise with which 
he listens to contradictions, — all this ought to teach 
us, and I wonder it has not before now, that the action 
of the spirit becomes more godlike as the senses fail, 
and that it rings out and proclaims, through these 
" jangled bells," the great truth of its immortality. 

4. So near an approach to death has shown me the 
wisdom of being ready always for the life which is 
beyond death. To-day is the day of salvation. The 
command, " Set thy house in order," comes to us while 
our faculties are yet clear and healtliful. We cannot 
be certain of anything which is undertaken amid the 
throes of dissolution. There is one, but only one — 
the thief on the cross — of whom we may positively 



SICKNESS AND ITS LESSONS. 409 

say that lie was turned from the power of Satan unto 
God while dying. How the heart of the poet Cowper 
yearns toward a deceased friend of skeptical opinions 
in the foUowino: extract from a letter to John New- 
ton: "But perhaps he might be enlightened in his 
last moments, and saved in the very article of disso- 
lution. It is much to be wished, and indeed hoped, 
that he was. Such a man reprobated in the great day 
would be the most melancholy spectacle of all that 
shall stand at the left hand hereafter. But I do not 
think that many, or indeed any, will be found there 
who in their lives were sober, virtuous, and sincere, 
truly pious in the use of their little light, and though 
ignorant of God in comparison with some others, yet 
sufficiently informed to know that He is to be feared, 
loved, and trusted. An operation is often performed 
within the curtains of a dying-bed, in behalf of such 
men, that the nurse and doctor have no suspicion of. 
The soul makes but one step out of darkness into 
light, and makes that step without a witness." And 
then this gentle psalmist confesses the reason of his 
willingness to believe in a death-bed repentance. He 
adds : *' My brother's case has made me very charitable 
in my opinion about the future state of such men." 
But no voice has ever come to us from the other side 
announcing the state of that vast multitude who have 
delayed to grapple with eternity until the final breath 
and gasp of time. We hope for all, and may be com- 
forted concerning them, as we read the story of that 
conversion on Calvary ; yet, with so slender a support 
to cling to, who should dare, in his own case, to pre- 
sume? Totally false impressions were conveyed to 
my mind, days before any one suspected delirium ; 
and wishes were expressed, and even gratified, which 
afterwards were viewed with regret. What if those 



410 SERMONS. 

directions, so kindly carried out by friends, liad per- 
tained to some weighty and sacred matter ? and how 
heart-crushing the reflection, on that shore from which 
none ever pass to this world, that the mistake must 
remain uncorrected, working out perhaps bitter and 
direful results, while the ages roll ! I am persuaded 
now that many last testaments — of the rich bequeath- 
ing their possessions, of parents choosing guardians 
for their children, of emperors disposing of their 
thrones — have been executed when the mind was 
bewildered and deceived. Insanity, not suspected by 
friends, is the cause that such testaments are some- 
times found so strangely ill-advised, not honoring the 
testator, nor conferring benefit, but the rather evil, 
upon the inheritors. If, then, we hold any trust which 
may become a power of mortmain controlling other 
lives for their weal or their woe, ought we not to 
avail ourselves of the calm moments of health, while 
false impressions are least likely to mislead the judg- 
ment, and when all the moral perceptions are accurate 
and clear, that our posthumous influence, our " life 
beyond life " in this world, may not curse but bless 
posterity ? 

But before all these matters there is one vast and 
overshadowing concern. " Set thy house in order ; " 
but have you yet planned and builded a hope for 
eternity? Possibly this inquiry finds you full of un- 
certainty and irresolution: not decided whether the 
Scriptures are all true, or partially false ; inclining 
now to this and now to that system of religious faith ; 
sometimes on the point of believing, and then again 
stoutly denying that you are in bondage to sin ; to-day 
almost persuaded to be a Christian, and to-morrow 
doubtful of the authority of Christ ; listening, for one 
Sabbath hour and with fear, to a voice sounding out 



SICKNESS AND ITS LESSONS. 411 

of the dread future, but turning back still to be led 
captive by a passing world ; idling away your hours 
along the banks, of this stream of time, and building- 
no ark for your imperilled soul, in which it may 
securely abide when forced upon shoreless and un- 
traversed waters ! Let us never forget, my friends, 
while owning the vanity of human life, that it is also 
of vast importance. It is vain certainly, as the in- 
spired Preacher contends, if we consider only its 
duration, and its meagre interests and rewards. But 
granting that it is only a point, still it is the point on 
which an eternity revolves. The moments are few 
and fleeting, but in them we scatter seed which is to 
bear us a harvest either of corruption or of life ever- 
lasting. Let us not stand wavering and questioning 
while the golden sands of our probation are so swiftly 
departing. Let us seize the opportunity, still gra- 
ciously lengthened out to us, of securing that mighty 
future for which the present is given. Recounting 
the manifold goodness of our God, and the comforts 
wherewith He has comforted us in every tribulation, 
let us not any longer presume on a favor nowhere 
promised ; but, yielding our souls to that other Com- 
forter sent in the Father's name unto the heirs of 
salvation, let us be so renewed, and built up in faith 
and true holiness, that, whenever the last sand shall 
drop, we can each one say, with our divine Teacher 
and Lord, " I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have 
finished the work which Thou gavest me to do." A 
life of which this high testimony shall constitute the 
befitting close cannot be incomj^lete, however feeble 
or short ; and all its sharp discipline, though not joy- 
ous but grievous now, shall reappear, transfigured by 
the indwelling Christ, in those bright robes awaiting 
it in heaven. 



THE ABUNDANT ENTRANCE. 

For so an entrance shall be administered unto you abundantly into 
the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. — 2 
Peter i. 11. 

I HAVE never been able to explain to myself sat- 
isfactorily the uplifting influence wbich tbese words 
have upon me whenever I read them. And this feel- 
ing of joy and wonder I no doubt share with all imper- 
fect Christians, — longing and struggling to be holy, 
yet compassed about with infirmities, and, despite 
their efforts, borne down and backward by the onsets 
of temptation. This text is to be classed with others, 
spoken from time to time by holy men as they were 
moved by the Holy Ghost, which utter to us the deep 
things of God. We feel their meaning, but are un- 
able to articulate it in words of our own. Something 
in them, which takes hold. of us with wondrous power, 
escapes our poor human speech. Nothing but the 
Spirit, which makes intercession for us with groanings 
that cannot be uttered, is able to breathe their mean- 
ing through the depths of our souls, in a kind of in- 
articulate joy and consolation. The curtain is lifted 
up, but the glory disclosed baffles our comprehension. 
We are caught in the embrace of celestial melodies ; 
yet it is not the full anthem, but only broken strains, 
that are wafted down to us. 

The apostle Peter is here looking forward to that 
scene in which a redeemed saint passes from the 



THE ABUNDANT ENTRANCE. 413 

church militant to the church triumphant. It is the 
hour of death to the Christian victor. He sees that 
disciple departing out of the world, yet to him it is not 
a departure, but "an entrance." Going from time 
into eternity is not the ending of life so much as its 
beginning. " Their works do follow them." A nobler 
service awaits them than they have hitherto performed. 
Not only this, but the faitliful believer, coming up out 
of the warfare of the present life, has an entrance 
administered to him " abundantly." What is there 
stored up under this idea of abundance which makes 
it so comforting to our despondent hearts ? " An abun- 
dant entrance." Can we fathom that expression ? 
Why does it come to us when we are almost ready to 
yield in the struggle, and cause us to mount up afresh 
as on wings of eagles ? " Be lifted up ye everlasting 
doors, and the King of Glory shall come in," is the 
welcome which awaits the Captain of our salvation. 
Is there to be such a lifting up of doors, and opening 
of the gates till they stand wide apart, for each poor 
soul sprinkled with the blood of that Captain ? If so, 
how wonderful ! It is an unspeakable thing ; a mira- 
cle of divine love not possible for us to utter. And 
this entrance, even for you and me, my brother, is into 
a kingdom ; the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour, 
who bought us for it with His own blood ; a kingdom 
which does not pass away, like those set up by men in 
this world, but which is everlasting ; an abundant en- 
trance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ. 

We stand with the inspired apostle, and gaze upon 
the scene as he paints it, while that entrance is " min- 
istered," overflowing with a solemn joy at the thought 
of how much more it suggests than it expresses. 



414 SERMONS. 

" What must it be to be there ? " is the question 
which our unsatisfied hearts are all the time asking ; 
for though we sing of the realms of the blest, the 
noontide of glory, the anthems of rapture, the rivers 
of pleasure, all this imagery does not tell the full 
story ; neither have entered into the heart of man the 
things which God hath prepared for them that love 
Him. Beyond all that we see, there is something un- 
seen; and toward that unexplored realm the soul is 
ever leaping forward, dwelling in it by faith, and 
finding there a blessedness, not yet comprehended, 
which belittles the best joys of the present time. 
When we sit by the side of the sea, and look out on 
its bright surface mirroring many a white sail, our 
thoughts do not stop even at its outmost rim, but leap 
beyond all it discloses to us, and go wandering over 
and through its invisible wastes. The fascination 
arises, not from the seen, but from the unseen : what 
is revealed to us would grow commonplace in a little 
while, but for those vast regions and depths over 
which is drawn the veil of waters. The great, still 
forest-trees, weaving their leafy arches over us, draw 
us on into their avenues, not by what they hang out 
visibly before us, but by that nameless spell which 
comes to us from their far, inmost depths: the re- 
cesses of silence, of mystery, of shadows yet unpz^o- 
faned by human footstep, are the sanctuary we seek. 
When we look on the setting sun, we cannot think of 
it merely as a sign that the day is past. This thought 
could never awaken those feelings of solemn wonder 
with which we always behold the outgoings of the 
evening. Our minds go forward to what is beyond. 
That withdrawing from our sight marks an '' entrance " 
into the unseen ; it suggests to us the wonders of a 



THE ABUNDANT ENTRANCE. 415 

realm not yet revealed. Those golden glories seem to 
us to skirt the doorway into heaven, and we stand on 
the edge of the sea of glass that is before the throne. 

Now the power which these scenes in nature exert 
upon us may help us in explaining, or rather in seeing 
why we cannot explain, the power of such words of 
Scripture as are uttered in the text. The soul leaps 
beyond all that is said, to the unspeakable ; the scene 
put before us suggests that of which we can only say 
that it is a far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory. To him who walks by sight, all things have their 
ending here. But to him who walks by faith, all these 
" endings," so called, are only beginnings. What is an 
exit to the man of the world, is to him an entrance. 
The hour of his departure is the hour of his sublimest 
hopes ; for it is only death itself which dies, and his 
foot is on the threshold of a temple into which he is 
going to join in the everlasting song. 

" It is not death to die, — 
To leave this weary road, 
And, 'mid the brotherhood on high, 
To be at home with God." 

How perverse our way of looking at the matter! 
It is not loss to die, but gain. It is not the end, 
but the beginning of all that is fair and blessed ; 
not a departure, but an entrance, — an entrance into 
our everlasting kingdom. Thanks be to God, who 
by His word of inspiration teaches us this truth, to 
which our natural heart cannot attain. Thanks to 
Him again, and in sweeter and loftier words if He has 
given us His spirit, so that we can take hold of the 
truth and be lifted up by it into that vision of the 
glory to come which takes from death its sting. Is it 
not the great attainment of life to be able, when its 



416 SERMONS. 

last hour comes, to hear tiie chorus of heavenly wel- 
comes before us drowning the plaintive farewells 
which follow after us ? — to be able to turn upon our 
natural fears, and silence their disturbing voice with 
the glad words, — 

"I'm returning', not departing ; 
My steps are homeward bound. 
I quit the land of strangers 
For a home on native ground. 

"I am rising, and not setting ; 
This is not night, but day. 
Not in darkness, but in sunshine. 
Like a star, I fade away. 

" All is well with me forever; 
I do not fear to go. 
My tide is but beginning 
Its bright eternal flow." 

The meaning of that great welcome into heaven, 
which the faithful Christian receives in the hour of 
death, does not come out so fully as it should in our 
English Bible. The figure which St. Peter uses is 
of military origin. He paints the dying believer as a 
soldier returning to his native city in triumph after 
a tedious warfare. The idea of a chorus, and of a 
long train of citizens coming out to meet him, and to 
escort him, with songs of victory and the jubilant 
strains of instruments of music, into the presence of 
Christ, is contained in the original word. The apos- 
tle sees the heroic Christian disciple honored with a 
welcome into heaven, which reminds him of the tri- 
umphs accorded to great military heroes in all coun- 
tries and times. So early as the time of Abraham 
we find notice of this custom. When he was return- 
ing from the slaughter of the kings, Melchizedek came 
out to meet him and blessed him. After the victory 



THE ABUNDANT ENTRANCE. 417 

of Israel over the Philistines, in the battle at which the 
giant of Gath was slain, while the armies were return- 
ing home, " the women came out of all the cities of 
Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with 
tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of music." 
We remember the return of our armies at the close of 
the war for the Union, — how our people flocked to 
the capital of the nation, and what pains were taken 
by all, both small and great, to express to them the 
deep gratitude of the country saved under God by 
their valor. But nothing of this nature probably 
ever surpassed those triumphs with which Roman gen- 
erals were honored, and accounts of which were famil- 
iar to the apostles, even if they had not witnessed them. 
The elaborate descriptions of some of those triumphs, 
by the native historians, — of Scipio returning from 
Carthage, of Csesar coming home from the conquest 
of Gaul, of Titus and Vespasian bringing back the 
spoils of the East, — amaze us. We wonder at the 
vast pains taken to express to the victorious warrior, 
for a single day, the almost wild adulation of the whole 
Roman people. There was indeed much cause for the 
custom which grew up, of putting a slave beside the 
crowned victor in his golden chariot, whose office was 
to remind him of his frailty, and that he was but a 
man after all, lest his heart should be too much lifted 
up within him in the midst of these demonstrations. 
Like these, and yet how wondrously unlike them, 
the entry of each humble follower of Christ into His 
everlasting kingdom ! His entrance shall be minis- 
tered unto him abundantly, — with such demonstra- 
tions of gladness as never greeted a Roman general, 
— for he has conquered, not a province, but the world. 
There is no need to put a monitor beside him, to keep 



418 SERMONS. 

him from being unduly elated ; for he has put down 
within himself all those lusts which war against the 
soul, and is kept holy, blameless, undefiled unto liis 
Lord's coming, at whose feet he lays the crown of 
victory, exclaiming, as a part of the victory, "Thou 
alone art worthy." 

This likening of the Christian to a soldier, though 
common to all the apostles, is more frequent in St. 
Paul's writings than elsewhere. He loved to call him- 
seK the soldier of Christ, a soldier of the cross ; and 
Christ Himself is the great Captain of his salvation. 
The young man Saul first appears distinctly before us 
as a military commander. — There was something in 
the diities of that office, — its exposures, discipline, 
perils, and encounters which pleased his heroic temper. 
The memory of it followed him all through his apos- 
tolic toils and sufferings for Christ. His description 
of that whole armor of God, which he bids the be- 
liever take to himself, found in the last chapter of 
Ephesians, is a marvel of brevity, accuracy, and com- 
pleteness. And the image of a warfare, under which 
he views the Christian life, follows him all through 
to the closing hour. He is still a soldier when he 
stands on the verge of time, his foot pressing the 
heavenly threshold, his earthly tabernacle ready to be 
dissolved, and the house not made with hands lifting 
up its goodly proportions into the horizon of his faith. 
" I have fought a good fight," he says ; " I have fin- 
ished my course, I have kept the faith : henceforth 
there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, 
which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me 
at that day." Peter says, in one place, that his 
brother Paul had written some things hard to be un- 
derstood ; but this figure of a triumphing warrior 



THE ABUNDANT ENTRANCE. 419 

seems not to have puzzled him at alL For he, too, 
now that he was nearing the everlasting kingdom of 
his Saviour, loved to feel that the glorified saints 
would come out to meet him in long procession, and 
escort him, with an abundant entrance, into his Lord's 
presence. And the prayer of the dear old man, for 
all who love our Lord Jesus Christ, is that they may 
receive the like precious welcome. If it be true, as 
the Romish branch of the Christian church teaches, 
that St. Peter is the gate-keeper of the New Jerusa- 
lem, holding the keys which unlock its pearly gates, 
with what joy must he perform his office, as one bat- 
tle-stained pilgrim after another comes up out of the 
tribulations of this life, and waits, under the archway 
of the everlasting doors, for the glittering cohorts 
which are to usher him in ! 

That is an entrance which the welcome home given 
to the earthly conqueror may well suggest, but by 
which it must in some things be forever surpassed. 
More like it was that entry into Jerusalem, on the 
first day of the week, when the Prince of Peace came 
not as princes of this world come, with banner and 
trumpet and garments rolled in blood, but meek and 
lowly, well pleased with the people, who cut down 
palm branches and spread their garments in the way, 
and blessing the little children shouting hosanna be- 
fore Him as He went up into the Temple ; not like that 
in the agony to which it led, — as the prelude to Geth- 
semane, Pilate's Hall, Golgotha, — but like it in the 
serene peacefulness of the victor, in the unmixed glad- 
ness of the welcome, the holy purity and sweetness of 
spirit which blooms out through the entire scene. 
Bunyan, giving his impression of the entrance of re- 
deemed souls into heaven, says : " A company of the 



420 SERMONS. 

heavenly host came out to meet them. . . . They com- 
passed them round on every side : some went before, 
some behind, and some on the right hand and some on 
the left, continually sounding as they went, with melo- 
dious noise, in notes on high ; so that the very sight 
was, to them that could behold it, as if heaven itself 
was come down to meet them. . . . There were also 
that met them with harps and crowns, and gave them 
to them ; the harps to praise withal, and the crowns in 
token of honor. Then I heard in my dream, that all 
the bells in the city rang again for joy, and that it was 
said unto them, ' Enter ye into the joy of your Lord.' " 
But even Bunyan, bold as his conceptions are of the 
Christian's entrance into Paradise, does not attempt 
to reveal all the glory of their triumph, for he adds : 
" Just as the gates were opened to let in the men, I 
looked in after them, and behold the city shone like 
the sun ; the streets also were paved with gold, and 
in them walked many men, with crowns on their heads, 
palms in their hands, and golden harps, to sing 
praises withal. There were also them that had wings, 
and they answered one another without intermission, 
saying, ' Holy, holy, holy is the Lord.' And after that 
they shut up the gates ; which, when I had seen, I 
wished myself among them." 

But perhaps our misgiving hearts say that such wel- 
comes can await only extraordinary Christians, — the 
Pauls, Luthers, Whitfields, Brainards, Judsons, whose 
hearts flamed with zeal for their Lord. Undoubtedly, 
as the stars differ one from another, so shall it be in 
the resurrection. But I think this difference will be 
in the persons themselves rather than in their welcome. 
God is rich in mercy toward us, even though we were 
dead in our sins, and raises us up into heavenly places, 



THE ABUNDANT ENTRANCE. 421 

that He may show the exceeding riches of His grace 
in Christ Jesus, saving us through our faith, which is 
His gift, and not for our works' sake, lest any man 
should boast. Though He puts before us no tempta- 
tion to be unfaithful Christians, but stimulates us to 
entire consecration by assuring us that, if we sow spar- 
ingly, we shall reap also sparingly, yet they who came 
into the vineyard at the eleventh hour received every 
man his penny ; and upon the things least honorable 
more abundant honor is bestowed, and God chooses not 
the mighty things, but the weak, foolish things of this 
world rather than the wise, that no flesh should glory 
in His presence. All is of grace. Every soul going 
up to be met by that celestial escort is a trophy of 
the victorious conflict of the Son of God with sin and 
death. For His sake alone, the ascending pilgrim is 
worthy ; and hence he is more worthy, a brighter wit- 
ness to the power of redemption, as he is feebler, and 
weiofhed down with a heavier load of infirmities. The 
glad father, we read, rejoiced most, not over his elder 
son ever with him, but over the prodigal. That the 
lost should be found, that the dead should be alive 
again, was special cause for thanksgiving ; and so 
shall it be, among the angels of God, over one weak, 
faltering sinner who has the courage to repent and 
set his face homeward, with a feeling of sorrow and 
un worthiness bowing him down while he toils forward. 
The greatest, the most conspicuous, those who make us 
wonder at their zeal and devotion, are not without us 
made perfect. We also which believe do enter into 
rest. God hath made us all partakers of the same 
joy. True, we are exhorted to lay up treasure in 
heaven ; to make to ourselves friends with the mam- 
mon of unrighteousness, who shall receive us, when 



422 SER3I0NS. 

our eartlily tabernacles fail, into everlasting habita- 
tions. It will be blessed, unspeakably blessed, if we 
are able to discern, in tliat descending escort, tbe faces 
of any kindred to whom we have tenderly performed all 
the offices of natural affection in Christ's name, — the 
faces of any children or youth whom we taught out 
of the word of God, and drew within the shelter of 
His covenant ; the faces of Cliristian friends to whom 
we kindly ministered, watching over them, not for 
their halting, but for their edification, till they were 
taken away before us, — blessed if we can see, in the 
welcoming throng, any souls from the region of the 
shadow of death, to whom we sent the messengers of 
Christ and His salvation ; any who once hungered 
and we fed them, or were thirsty and we gave them 
drink, or sick and in prison and we visited them. 
But "not unto us, not unto us," will be our joyous 
confession, as we go up into the kingdom. All these, 
whom we helped in the days of their suffering, will 
minister our entrance unto us abundantly ; yet when 
we see the King in His beauty, the utmost that we 
have done will not prevent us from saying that we are 
unprofitable servants, and joining, with lowly voice, 
in the ascription which no creature is too holy to 
make : " Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, 
be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto 
the Lamb, for ever and ever." 

There are victories to be achieved in the heart sub- 
limer than any we win outwardly on the world's broad 
stage. He that ruleth his own spirit — bringeth it, 
that is, into sweet acquiescence with the holy and 
blessed will of God — is greater than he that taketh 
a city. Man looketh on the outward appearance, but 
God on the heart. The angels watch our spiritual 



THE ABUNDANT ENTRANCE. 423 

conflicts, as they did the temptation of Christ in the 
desert, and His agony in the garden. The victory is 
rejoiced in, and a record of it made in God's book of 
remembrance, whenever we conquer an evil desire ; our 
patience amid difficulties, our fortitude under heavy 
burdens, our cheerfulness through everything that 
would fret and annoy, our unmurmuring submission 
when God smites us with the rod of His chastisement, 
are noted down ; and there is nothing hidden of tliis 
lowly disciplesliip which shall not be revealed, nothing 
covered which shall not be made known, but every 
man shall have praise of God for all that he has se- 
cretly denied himself, or silently suffered, or done for 
his Lord's sake in unseen and wearisome paths. 

Such, my struggling Christian brother, is the view 
which the Scriptures give of your passage out of mor- 
tality into immortality. And this is the picture which 
we should hang up in our minds, over against all those 
gloomy forebodings of our death which fallen nature 
suggests. The terrors of dissolution, the racking pain 
and agony, the darkness, and the silence from which we 
shrink back with awful dread, cannot be overcome by 
our natural strength, or in any direct conflict. It is 
faith, beholding the glory to which death conducts us, 
that transfigures the final scene. The thanatopsis 
which nature gives is appalling, but that which faith 
supplies casteth out all fear. It makes us long to de- 
part. It makes us think, with a serene thankfulness, of 
the kindred and friends in Christ who have been taken 
from our side. We stand like Elislia by the river, 
praising God for His goodness to those from whom 
we have been parted asunder ; gazing, \vith a sublime 
joy, upon the chariot of fire, and the horses of fire, 
by which they are carried up out of our sight into 



424 SERMONS. 

heaven ; and glad beyond measure if we may take up 
their descending mantle, and go forward in the good 
fight of faith, a double portion of the spirit in which 
they triumphed resting upon us, till we, too, shall be 
permitted to lay down our burdens, and pass over into 
that radiant land where the wicked cease from trou- 
bling and the weary are at rest. Here it is crosses ; 
there it shall be crowns. Here it is struggles ; there 
it shall be victory. Here all our joys, with our days 
and years, have an end ; there they shall only have 
their beginning forevermore. Here our hopes die 
with each descending sun ; there an everlasting morn- 
ing shall dawn. Here we tread paths which are nar- 
row and strait, and which but few have the courage to 
tread with us ; there an entrance will be ministered 
unto us abundantly, through the ample gates, by a 
great company of the glorified which no man can 
number. Here we stand like unfinished ships on the 
shore, and must submit to all the cutting, hewing, 
bending, and riveting needful to make us ready ; 
there the word shall be given, and we shall launch 
away, all sail set, trembling with immortal vigor in 
every part, upon that sea whose waves are peace, and 
where the dark shadows of our sins shall be no more 
seen or felt forever. 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 

Thy years shall have no end. — Psalms cii. 27. 

These words are the exclamation of a trustful and 
adoring joy. 

The psalmist has just been meditating upon his own 
years, which came to an end so rapidly, one after an- 
other, that their swift succession surprised and star- 
tled him : but while he is overwhelmed by the thought 
that his years will soon be numbered, he finds comfort 
and lofty repose of soul in knowing that the years of 
God, whom he has made his refuge, have no end. He 
says that his " days are consumed like smoke," that 
his " heart is smitten and withered hke grass." He 
repeats the comment, " My days are like a shadow that 
declineth, and I am withered like grass ; " and then 
he escapes from the consciousness of his own frailty in 
the sublime words, " Thou, O Lord, shalt endure for- 
ever, and thy remembrance unto all generations." 
Having rested for a moment on this radiant summit 
of faith, he again descends to his poor condition as 
mortal ; where he is comforted again, also, in the as- 
surance that God hears the groaning of the prisoner, 
and does not despise the prayer of the destitute. Evi- 
dently the weight of years is getting to be heavy upon 
him, and he is sitting still in his infirmity, listening 
for the approach of swift-footed Death ; for he says 
that God has '' weakened his strength by the way." 
But he does not suffer the sense of his feebleness, and 



420 SERMONS. 

his knowledge that Death is at the door to overcome 
him. He rises above these, and all else that pertains 
to him as mortal, and glories in the God of his salva- 
tion, who of old laid the foundation of the earth, and 
the heavens are the work of His hands. " They shall 
perish, but thou shalt endure ; yea, all of them shall 
wax old like a garment : as a vesture shalt thou 
change them, and they shall be changed ; but thou 
art the same, and thy years shall have no end." The 
thought that God is unchangeable and eternal lifts 
him out of the consciousness of his own frailty ; and 
he has hope of the future, and of the whole short-lived 
race of man, for the reason that God is ever the same, 
— saying, " The children of thy servants shall con- 
tinue, and their seed shall be established before thee." 
Now, dear friends, the course of the psalmist is a 
good example for us to follow to-day, I think, if any 
of us, as some of us naturally must be, are inclined to 
associate sad thoughts of our frailty, and loosening 
hold upon this life, with the outgoing of another year. 
How to contemplate the rapid flight of time without 
fear, disturbance of mind, or any regret ; how to spend 
a serene and happy old age, growing more peacefid 
and joyous in soul as the shadows of the long night 
fall more thickly about us, — is a question which wise 
men have discussed ever since the w^orld began. 
Christ, our great Pattern, has not taught us in His 
life how we are to live in our declining years. He 
did not live to be old. He was an infant, a child, 
a youth, but never an aged man : His life ended 
during the period of early manhood. One of the 
most admired treatises we have on old age was writ- 
ten by Cicero, the great orator and moralist of 
Rome. He, however, had only the light of nature to 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 427 

guide him ; and while he describes most charmingly 
those simple rural pursuits which become the aged, he 
yet misses almost whoUy those higher sources of joy 
and peace to which the Bible points us. This com- 
fort in God, which is the only real comfort, and which 
is more than equal to all our needs, gives its whole 
value to everything that can be said on the subject ; 
and it is to that that I would now direct your 
thoughts : " Thy years shall have no end." 

There was a period in all our lives when we per- 
haps did not feel our need of the contentment of mind 
which these words are fitted to give. The years were 
not short, but long to us, often tedious and irksome 
even, when we were children and youth. Then we 
wished ourselves older than we were, as now we are 
tempted to wish ourselves younger than we are. How 
we longed for the time when we should be emanci- 
pated from the restraints of childhood ; when we 
should cease to be under tutors and governors ; when 
the cords of parental authority should cease to hold us 
back and guide us ; when we should be free to choose 
our friends, our occupation, our pleasures, and to 
enter into all the affairs and excitements of life ! It 
seemed to us then that the slow years would never 
come to an end ; that our wearisome school days would 
never be over ; that the apprenticeship would never 
give way to the profession, the business, the trade. 
How long it seemed to us that we waited for the 
Christmas holidays, the summer vacation, the party, 
the visit, the promised excursion to begin! We 
counted the days, and the hours almost, glad to note 
their lessening number, as we looked forward with 
eager and impatient hearts. 

But now, if we have reached the meridian of life, 



428 SERMONS. 

if we have climbed to the summit and are beginning 
to look down the declivity on the other side ; if we 
are not toiling up toward manhood or womanhood, 
but beginning to step down toward old age and death, 
— how changed our impressions of the lapse of time ! 
It is not slow, but swift. The wheels do not seem to 
be off its chariot, nor does it drive heavily. It is 
more than swift-footed : it is winged. So far are our 
years from having no end, that their beginnings and 
endings are nearly all we can remember about them. 
Only a few prominent events or experiences appear 
to us, some bright and sunny, and others sombre and 
frowning, above the dense mist which has settled 
down upon our retrospect. Whether we are joyful or 
sad, in view of this accelerated speed with which our 
years fly away, we must admit the fact. And I think 
that, while we admit it, it is possible for us also to 
rejoice in it. It is our privilege to be able to say, — 

' ' Fly swifter round ye wheels of time, 
And bring- the welcome day." 

To him who has remembered his Creator in the days 
of his youth, with that spirit of true piety which the 
words imply, the evil days do not come, nor the years 
draw nigh in which he finds no pleasure. We can 
watch with glad and peaceful hearts the advance of 
old age. We can say with joy. We spend our years as 
a tale that is told." If our lives be as a vapor which 
appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away ; 
if they are like the swift ships, like the eagle that 
hasteth to his prey, — yet this fact need not sadden us, 
but only fill us with a peace which is more deep, and 
with a hope which grows brighter and brighter. The 
near prospect of death had nothing gloomy in it to 
St. Paul's mind when he said : " I am in a strait be- 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 429 

twixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with 
Christ which is far better ; " when he said : " I 
have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, 
I have kept the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for 
me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the 
righteous Judge, shall give me at that day." It was 
with a peace past understanding, and with a hope full 
of immortality, that aged Simeon in the Temple, when 
he had taken the infant Saviour in his arms, prayed 
that he might depart. The desire to escape from life, 
for the reason that it has been a scene of bitter disap- 
pointment and trial, is not commended in Scripture. 
Elijah, saying in his despondency, " It is enough. 
Lord ; and now, I pray thee, take away my life," was 
rebuked for his discontent. God gives us our life ; 
and we should cherish it, however it may be crowded 
with infirmities and sorrows, while He deals it out to 
us. Our view of the objects of this earthly discipline 
is very narrow if we suppose that the feeblest and 
most painful life cannot be a rich blessing. We 
therefore should never hate our lives, or be weary of 
them, though they have become to us only an unmixed 
trial. We should bravely accept them, and jo}"fully 
live them through to the end ; and we should meet 
death, not as an escape from the evils of our earthly 
lot, but as another opportunity whereby we may glo- 
rify God. That which prepares us for the approach of 
death is the same which fits us for our daily life, — 
the full and joyous consciousness, namel}^, that, whether 
living or dying, we are the Lord's. Old age was not 
a sombre period in human life to Bunyan's thought, 
but the brightest and sweetest stage of Clii-istian ex- 
perience ; for his delightful picture of the Land of 
Beulah is in full sight of the dark river, — the place 



430 SERMONS. 

of rest and heavenly contemplation which comes to re- 
fresh the pilgrims after their hard journey. And as 
their last days were their best days, so may ours be, if 
we have their faith in us. 

In saying that it is the consciousness of union with 
God in Christ Jesus which enables the aged to view 
the rapid flight of time with composure, I do not for- 
get the many circumstances which tend to make us 
happy and peaceful in our swiftly declining years. 

It is a great comfort to any one, when he has reached 
the time of life in which he finds all his years short 
and hasty, if he indeed have that present solace which 
should accompany old age, " As honor, love, obedi- 
ence, troops of friends." It lightens the weight of 
years upon the infirm Christian to know that he is 
not wholly a burden to others ; that he is able to bear 
his own burden. He sees behind him the softening 
vistas of a well-spent life. He has been a friend to 
others, has stood faithfully and honestly in his lot, has 
served his generation as God gave him opportunity. 
Never anxious to be rich, or worrying about the mor- 
row, he has laid aside enough to keep him from any 
distressing sense of dependence on his fellow-men ; 
enough to repay them amply for all the service he 
may need in his infirmity, and enough to make glad 
the hearts of the widow and the fatherless who may 
look to him in their affliction. Such is the picture 
which we are wont to paint in our minds of the old 
age we should most desire. But we cannot all attain 
to it. Many who deserve it most, so far as we can 
discern, are not permitted to enjoy it. And even 
those who do achieve it are not blessed by it as they 
had fondly hoped. Their life seems calm and sweet 
to those who only look on it or anticipate it. But 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 431 

the beauty is external. It does not enter into those 
hidden depths which are the seat of true pleasure and 
pain. Our charming idyl turns out to be an illusion. 
Amid so much which we should expect to give peace 
of mind, happiness, relief from all anxious care, full 
and sweet content, we are surprised to find restless- 
ness, and a perpetual going about, and feeling as it 
were in the dark, as though the soul had lost some 
dear support, or were seeking some blessedness which 
forever eludes it. That life is not anchored. It can- 
not say, with a rejoicing confidence : " I know that my 
Redeemer liveth." " This night thy soul shall be re- 
quired of thee ! " are words which startle it, and from 
which it shrinks with fear. The most all its pleasant 
surroundings can do for it is to mitigate the physical 
pain, to soothe the sense of weariness a little : it needs 
some nearer and surer support, in order that it may 
glory in its infirmities. 

Another refuge to which men often betake them- 
selves, hoping to escape the gloom which they feel 
amid their swiftly passing years, is constant occupa- 
tion. Beware of idleness, especially towards the close 
of a busy life, is the caution of worldly prudence. 
Keep your mind so thoroughly occupied as to forget 
the morrow ; let the present and passing hour fill your 
thoughts. Not a few persons who thought themselves 
wise, acting upon this maxim, have tried to plan their 
lives accordingly. They reserved for their declining 
years some congenial undertaking, which they hoped 
would so engross them as to make them indifferent to 
the approaches of age. They have had much to say 
about the duty of not growing old, and have repeated 
the assertion that they never felt younger or enjoyed 
life more, in a way which betrayed the lurking fear of 



432 SERMONS. 

their hearts. But this is not the way of the Bible, 
dear friends. It is wholly proper and wise in us to 
provide that our brain and hands shall have pleasant 
occupation up to the very hour of death, if this be in- 
deed possible. But in a great many instances it is not 
possible ; and even where it is, why should it be used 
as a trick to make us insensible of our swiftly ap- 
proaching end ? No ; we wish to face the King of 
Terrors and see him disarmed. It is cowardly to try 
to hide from ourselves the real case in which we are. 
We do not want the courage of the ostrich, which 
endures danger by hiding its head. Yet this is the 
courage, and the only courage, which a great many 
moralists, having no faith in our blessed Saviour, not 
only preach, but try to practice. The future is all 
dark, empty, and dreadful to them ; and hence, when 
they begin to grow old, they busy themselves more 
than ever with their books, their pens, their scientific 
investigations, their travels, — openly confessing that 
they hope Death will overtake them before they are 
made aware of his approach. Such is the courage of 
unbelievers. They know of no victory over Death but 
this. Christ, on the other hand, would have us fully 
awake to the coming of the pale messenger ; would 
give us that courage which dares to contemplate him 
as near, and which welcomes him when he comes. All 
mere human devices are dishonest ; they do but drug 
our senses to the awful fact of mortality. We need 
that in us which shall enable us to look on Death with 
unblanched countenances. It is when the touch of his 
cold hand does not terrify us, though we carefully note 
the chill creeping all through our frame, that we get 
the true victory over him. Jesus did not evade the 
subject of His own death in talking with His friends. 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 433 

Even amid the sublime glories of the transfiguration, 
He spoke calmly of '' His decease which He should ac- 
complish at Jerusalem." It is a beautiful witness to 
the faith in God, so much better than all human phi- 
losophy, which cheered the souls of the ancient patri- 
archs, prophets, and kings, that they, in view of their 
own death, gathered their children and friends about 
them, and discoursed so calmly and sweetly of their 
departure. We cannot read the accounts of the last 
days of Jacob, of Moses, of David, without feeling 
that those days were indeed their best days. A holy 
radiance, as the sun setting in glory after a season of 
tempests, invests them. It is worth a whole life of 
battle to be able to bid adieu to life with such calm 
and lofty joy. 

Our sense of the rapid flight of time would not 
sadden us, but on the contrary be most grateful and 
cheering to our hearts, if we could realize that our 
true happiness is in the future rather than in the past. 
This is one secret of the eagerness of childhood and 
youth to grasp what is before them. In our young 
years we are looking forward to something in this life 
which we think will increase our importance and make 
us happier. But as we get near to the end of the pres- 
ent life we do not extend those same feelings on into 
the heavenly realm. The grave limits our natural de- 
sire, and we turn back from its mystery and silence to 
live over again our sunnier days. Thus the habit of 
our minds becomes wholly changed : instead of locat- 
ing our joys in the future, as we once did, we find 
them all in the past. This is nature, and we over- 
come it only by that faith which is the gift of God. 
If our friends, when they are taken away by death, 
might go from us as Elijah went from Elisha, their 



434 SERMONS. 

departure would, perhaps, build a golden bridge over 
the dark river, across which our hearts would follow 
with yearning desire and hope. But instead of the 
chariot of fire and the glorious translation, turning 
our thoughts away upward, we have the solemn hearse 
and funeral ; and our poor hearts cling to the green 
turf and white tablets, where we fancy that what we 
so loved has been deposited by us. Thus do all the 
joys and hopes of our lives get garnered up, and laid 
away in the past ; and the future is vacant, dark, and 
dismal to our view. No doubt it helped the faith of 
the apostles greatly to see their Master received up 
into heaven, as He was, from the top of Olivet. That 
ascension mightily widened the sphere of their hopes. 
They saw that it was not all of life to live. Their 
expectation at once sprang forward beyond this short 
life, and took in the whole unending future of the soul. 
The resurrection became the great truth on which they 
insisted in their preaching. Thenceforth their con- 
versation was in heaven, whither Christ the forerun- 
ner had entered ; and they longed to depart, and be 
with Him in the kingdom which He was preparing for 
them. If we could always have that apostolic faith 
and assurance, dear friends, the rapid flight of time 
would be a joy to us. We should thank God that we 
are getting where the pearly gates and the immortal 
towers are in full sight, and the river of death would 
be to us " an insignificant rill," which we should be 
eager to cross at the earliest possible hour. But our 
friends do not go in the sublime manner in which 
Christ went. Their departure from us, one after an- 
other, tends to draw our affections back into the past, 
rather than make them leap forward into the future. 
Even the hope of heaven is not always able to recon- 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 435 

cile us to tlie loss of earth. Our faith wavers and is 
weak in the growing gloom. The hand by which we 
hold our earthly treasures is gradually relaxing its 
grasp, and we cannot, with our other hand, get any 
comforting hold upon the things laid up for us. 

There is, indeed, but one sure and full deliverance. 
Is there any among you that walketh in darkness, and 
hath no light ? Let him trust in the Lord, and stay 
himself on his God. From all our philosophizing, 
from all our devices by which we would blind our eyes 
to the fleetness of our years, even from those eternal 
joys to which it is the office of faith to bear our hearts 
forward, we are called back to Him whose dear chil- 
dren we are ; of whose nature we partake ; with w^hose 
life we are identified ; in whom we move and have our 
being, — the mighty God, whose years shall have no 
end. Is Christ our Refuge to-day? Are we indeed 
one with Him, grafted into Him by a living faith, so 
that the life which is in Him is in us also ? Then we 
may turn away our thoughts from all gloomy ques- 
tions, from our own frailty, and brief and empty lives, 
and lose ourselves in the joyous contemplation of His 
eternity. His unchangeableness, His ever-living and 
life-giving love. " I am the resurrection and the life," 
said He, as He stood by the grave of Lazarus. These 
words, which have carried hope and joy to millions of 
sorrowing hearts, could have no consolation for us but 
for the blessed fact that we are members of Christ's 
body. This mystical oneness with Him, into which 
we enter when we believe on His name, is our warrant 
that His destiny shall be ours ; that we all were cruci- 
fied in His crucifixion, and died in His death ; that we 
have been raised up together with Him into heavenly 
places, and shall die no more, since He liveth forever. 



436 SERMONS. 

" Thy years shall have no end : " this is the bright and 
impenetrable shield with which we turn aside every 
dart which death aims at us. The Captain of our sal- 
vation has conquered the last enemy. He is so won- 
derful in His working, so glorious in power, so change- 
less in dominion, and we are so entirely committed 
into His hands in the everlasting covenant sealed with 
His blood, that, while we think upon Him and our re- 
lations to Him, there is nothing which hath power to 
hurt us. All things are ours, — death as well as life ; 
the past, the present, and that which is to come. 
Every fear is repelled, and every gloomy thought flies 
away, as it becomes Christ for us to live, and He is 
formed within us, — He, the Ancient of Days, and of 
everlasting years. 

It is with reference to two great enemies, sin and 
death, that the Bible calls Christ our Conqueror. Very 
naturally, perhaps, we think of Him chiefly as the 
great Champion who conquers sin for us. Under His 
leadership we overcome the world, and are made able 
to live holy and godly lives. He, dwelling within us, 
gradually displaces our indwelling sin ; and, as His 
life unfolds in ours, we are changed from glory to 
glory till at length we are filled with the fullness of 
God. But side by side with this story of the conquest 
of sin which Christ gains for us, our hearts are re- 
galed with bright views of the complete victory over 
death which we have in Him. The apostles dwell 
quite as much on this phase of Christ's love for us as 
on the other. Indeed, they often speak of sin as itself 
a species of death ; and so all the infinite blessing, 
whi<jh comes to us through faith in Christ, is summed 
up in the one victory over the grave which we have 
through Him. You know how it is with soldiers, 



THE VICTORY OVER DEATH. 437 

when some great general, in whom they have perfect 
confidence, takes the command of them. They cease 
to think of the power and number of their enemies, 
or of their own weaknesses. They forget themselves, 
and what may be before them, in their enthusiasm for 
the leader who was never known to fail ; who is as 
sure to conquer as he is to give battle. But this eager 
and joyous courage, so easy for us to understand, is 
only a faint image of that which may fill all our hearts 
when we have indeed accepted, as our almighty Leader, 
Him who is " the Death of death, and hell's Destruc- 
tion." The thought of Him as our Chamnion who 
meets death for us, the consciousness of His abound- 
ing love poured free as the sunshine around us, crowds 
out every fear, every gloomy apprehension ; and we 
cannot draw back, or falter in the way by which He 
leads us, knowing that we are all the time pressing on 
into a fuller knowledge an*d sweeter enjoyment of the 
treasures of wisdom and blessedness which are hid in 
Him. 

Dear friends, where we have been wont to see 
death, let us henceforth see nothing but Christ. Let 
us see, not our own weaknesses, but Christ where we 
once saw them. Let us see Christ instead of our sins, 
Christ taking the place of every doubt and fear, Christ 
formed within us, Christ put upon us the hope of 
glory, Christ in the room of all that terrifies or dis- 
turbs us, — Christ the conqueror of every foe, the 
healer of every sorrow, the fulfillment of every hope, 
our joy and the crown of our rejoicing. 



THE GOSPEL OF THE WINDOWS.^ 

Blessed is the man whom thou ehoosest, and causest to approach 
unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts : we shall be satisfied with 
the goodness of thy house, eren of thy holy temple. — Ps. Ixv. 4. 

If I needed any warrant for speaking to you of the 
windows in our church, as I now propose to do, it is 
ready for me in great plenty, throughout the Psalms 
of David, who is never weary of writing about God's 
house, praising its goodness, and picturing to us the 
beauty of each part and feature. 

I know nothing of the special thought or purpose 
which the artist had in mind when he designed these 
windows. I shall not be at all disturbed if I fail to 
get his point of view, or whatever violence I do to his 
ideas ; for I look on these symbols placed about me 
by human hands, just as I look on the symbols which 
God has placed around me in nature. They are to 
me a language ; and they utter to me certain great 
truths respecting God, and respecting Christ and His 
salvation, which I believe the Holy Spirit makes me 
able to discern, and which I pray that He may com- 
municate to your hearts while I am speaking. 

1. First is the window behind the audience, in the 
gable toward the setting sun ; which you need not see 
to understand, for its meaning lies partly in the fact 
that it is behind you. It represents the beginning of 
the kingdom of God on earth ; His revelation of His 

^ An interpretation of the Old South Church windows. 



THE GOSPEL OF THE WINDOWS. 439 

love and saving mercy in the early dawn of human 
history, before and just after the deluge, in the times 
of the patriarchs, and while His people w^ere led by 
Moses and Aaron. It was the age of animal worship 
in the lands to which God came; and He revealed 
Himself, to those whom He would save, through the 
symbols from the animal world which they used in 
religious worship. Hence the cherubim. These were 
composite figures : having the face of a man to signify 
intelligence and wisdom ; the face of a lion to signify 
strength and majesty ; the face of an ox to signify pa- 
tience and obedience ; the face of an eagle to signify 
far-sightedness and swiftness. Now these four faces 
are given in our window ; and thus the window repre- 
sents that whole early period in which God spoke to 
men chiefly through symbols. Cherubim were placed 
at the entrance to the Garden of Eden to keep the 
way of the tree of life. Cherubim were placed on 
the ark of the covenant, guarding the shekinah above 
the mercy-seat. Figures of cherubim were woven into 
the curtains of the tabernacle ; and they reappear in 
the temple at Jerusalem. Ezekiel saw cherubim in 
his vision by the river Chebar. And John in Patmos, 
who uses the Old Testament imagery, speaks of them 
as guarding the white throne in heaven. They are 
spoken of in certain places as having wings full of 
e^es ; and this fact the artist has given us in the 
window. We have, therefore, suggested to us in a 
single picture that whole early period through which 
God revealed Himself to men in the language of sym- 
bols. But these four faces, with their backgromid of 
wings full of eyes, are placed between the four arms 
of a cross in the window. At the centre of the cross, 
where its four arms meet, can be seen the three initial 



440 SERMONS, 

letters wMcli teach us that Jesus Christ is the Saviour 
of men. Around this centre is a blazing sun, and at 
the extremity of each arm is another sun, teaching us 
that Christ is the light of the world. Yet this cross 
and these suns are but dimly disclosed ; the cross is 
in the midst of the cherubim, whose glory overshadows 
it. And thus we are taught that the atonement of 
Christ, to be fully revealed at a future day, was the 
underlying fact of all that early symbolism. We see 
it but dimly, and the whole window has a somewhat 
confused look, thus reminding us that God's first 
revelations were imperfect shadows of good things to 
come. He came down to the low estate of men, and 
made known His saving mercy toward them, not all 
at once but gradually, as they were able to bear it. 

2. We pass, next, from the period of partial sym- 
bols to that of distinct prophecy. This period is given 
us in the figures of the four great prophets, — Isaiah, 
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, — in the wall to the 
left of the organ choir. Their words cleared up to 
men much that was obscure in the earlier worship. 
The prophets denounced sin in all its forms, as visible 
symbols could not do ; and they foretold the coming 
of One who should deliver the world from sin. This 
was especially true of Isaiah, whom we call " the 
evangelical prophet ; " and he is therefore represented, 
in the window, clasping the symbol of the Lamb of 
God with his right arm, while his left hand is uplifted 
to entreat attention. The burden of that entreaty is 
written on a scroll which he holds up to view, '' Hear, 
O heavens, and give ear, O earth," — words which 
may be found in the first chapter of his prophecy, at 
the second verse. The words on the scroll which 
Jeremiah holds are the following: "And the Lord 



THE GOSPEL OF THE WINDOWS. 441 

said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy 
mouth ; " which occur at the ninth verse in the first 
chapter of his prophecy. He, too, stands with up- 
lifted finger, and looks off, as though speaking to the 
whole world, warning men to give ear to the divine 
messages which he brings. Next we have Ezekiel, 
holding with both hands the scroll, on which are writ- 
ten, from the eleventh chapter, fifth verse of his proph- 
ecy, the words, " The spirit of the Lord fell upon me, 
and said unto me. Speak." He grasps these words as 
though they were the comfort of his soul. For he 
was naturally timid like Moses, and found courage to 
go and speak unto Israel, only in the assurance that 
God was with him, and that he spoke God's words, 
not his own. Last in this series of windows we have 
Daniel ; and on his scroll are written the words at the 
sixteenth verse in the tenth chapter of his prophecy : 
" Behold, one like the similitude of the sons of men 
touched my lips." The incarnate Christ, that is, be- 
comes the theme of his prophecies. He has visions 
which are in many respects the same as those of John 
in Patmos ; and he foretells with wonderful exact- 
ness the glories of the kingdom which is to be ever- 
lasting, and to which the dominion under the whole 
heaven shall be given. Now we are to bear in mind 
that these four figures stand for all prophecy, just as 
the four faces, with the cross under and among them, 
stand for all revelations of God through visible sym- 
bols. In earlier times God spoke to men chiefly 
through material forms, addressed to the eye. But 
gradually He chose articulate speech, addressed to the 
ear ; and this language, in the mouths of His prophets, 
enabled Him to utter more definitely the counsels of 
His love, and to point men forward, with ready and ex- 



442 SERMONS. 

pectant hearts, to the great clay of His salvation which 
should rise upon them in the coming of the Messiah. 

3. Accordingly we have, to represent the dawn of 
this great day, our third series of windows, — that 
behind the pulpit, and shedding its soft beauty over 
all the house, — which pictures to us the birth of 
Christ. How in keeping it is with the character of 
the event which it celebrates ! its colors marvelously 
restful to the eye, and holding us with a stronger spell 
the more we look upon them ; even as there are no 
words so fitted to soothe and gladden our souls, bless- 
ing us more the more we study them, as those upon 
the scroll running across tlie window, and let down 
toward us by angel hands, which say, " Glory to God 
in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward 
men." We are helped to the interpretation of this 
large window by the central window in the cluster 
above it, representing to us the infant Saviour in the 
manger. Around this centre are gathered, in the 
other small windows, angels with various musical 
instruments, — such as the harp, the cymbal, the cor- 
net, and the organ, — praising their incarnate King. 
And at the two lower corners, on the right hand and 
the left, are the two Greek letters, Alpha and Omega ; 
and around them faces in ruby, proclaiming that 
Christ is the First and the Last. 

Looking now at the great window, we see the angels 
crowding the high arches of heaven, blowing their 
trumpets, covered with light, pressing downward upo 
the night air, their faces full of a sweet and loving 
calm, as though they were full of sympathy for a lost 
world, and glad, for our sake, to bring to us the good 
tidings of gTeat joy. Beneath them is the dark-blue 
*sky of an Oriental night. The stars are shining. A 



THE GOSPEL OF THE WINDOWS. 443 

crescent moon, on the right, interprets to us those 
words of John, '^ He must increase." The prophetic 
star, which the wise men followed, is seen above the 
tower of Bethlehem. And the white dove, flying in 
the midst toward the left, may be taken as a symbol 
of the Holy Spirit poured out on the shepherds, en- 
abling them to see the heavenly vision. These, with 
their flocks, fill the lower part of the window. Some 
of them have fallen on their knees, and the flowers 
and grass and shrubs are bright about them. They 
are clad in the plain garments of their calling, with 
their shepherd's crooks and wallets and pipes and 
water-bottles. And their faces and various attitudes 
are a most instructive study. The least excited of 
them all is a boy, a truly representative figure, un- 
awed by the scene, holding his lantern behind him, 
and looking on with a child's wonder and enjoyment. 
The flocks, awakened by the light, seem to think that 
morning has dawned, and are conducting themselves 
as sheep and lambs should under that impression. 
The shepherds on the left of the picture seem to rep- 
resent that class of men who gladly welcomed Christ, 
and believed on Him as the Saviour of their souls ; 
for there is a look of faith, of hopes fulfilled, of rev- 
erence, of humility and consecration, on their faces. 
But on the right, under their rude shed, we see harder 
faces, and eyes with a cold twinkle in them. They 
have a doubting look in their astonishment ; do not 
seem to be sweetly entranced like the others. And I 
cannot help fancying that they represent to us those 
Jews who rejected Christ when He came, as the others 
do all those who with meekness and joy receive Him. 
Thus has this window spoken to me ; yet it may have 
spoken differently to you, — something else, or more. 



444 SEEMONS. 

or not so mucli ; for of course its language to us, in 
these minutiae, will depend on the thoughts and feel- 
ings with which we study it. 

4. Continuing on now, in the order of the Bible 
which we have thus far followed, we come next to 
the four small windows to the right of the organ, 
which represent the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, and John. It is by no means to be regretted 
that they happen to be small ; for they come after 
Christ, whose greatness belittles all things else. The 
four prophets, who expound to us the symbols of the 
western window, may be made large ; for their words 
are nobler and better than the symbols they explain. 
But the evangelists, who record the events of the divine 
mission foreshadowed in this eastern window, do not 
add anything to it. They are represented each with 
a pen, and with a book in which he writes, thus signi- 
fying that it was their office simply to describe the 
doings and take down the sayings of Christ. One of 
the evangelists, John, was also one of the most promi- 
nent of the apostles ; and we have, besides his Gospel 
and visions in Patmos, his three affectionate letters to 
the churches. As the four prophets represent the whole 
Old Testament Scriptures, so the four evangelists rep- 
resent all the writers of the New Testament. And 
thus the entire circle of holy Scripture is complete, 
without bringing in the two transept- windows. These, 
to which we next come, have their distinct office ; 
which is to represent to us more particularly the his- 
tory of Christ and of His church in the world. 

5. Turning, therefore, to the north transept, we see 
Christ, the wonder-worker, during the period of His 
incarnation. The cluster of small windows at the top 
gives us, in the centre, the symbol of the atoning 



THE GOSPEL OF THE WiyDOWS. 445 

Lamb. Thus we have the key to the whole, — God 
manifest in the flesh to destroy sin. The small win- 
dows grouped around this have in them angels bear- 
ing scrolls ; and on the scrolls are written the names 
of the cardinal Christian graces, — love, faith, joy, 
goodness, peace, gentleness, long-suffering. They are 
seven in number, thus signifying completeness of 
Christian character. The face of each angel seems 
to express the gracious quality whose name he holds 
up. These seven graces were all conspicuous in our 
atoning Saviour, and our eye instinctively turns from 
them to Him. Beginning on the left, we see Him in 
the act of stilling the tempest. What majesty there 
is in His attitude, in His countenance, and in His up- 
lifted hand, as He speaks the sublime words, " Peace, 
be still ! " He is the Lord of nature, whom winds 
and seas obey ; and a divine calm fills Him amid 
the storm which has made His disciples frantic with 
terror. Passing on from this scene, we next see Him 
in the house of Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue. 
There are the afflicted father and mother, and the dis- 
ciples whom he admitted to the chamber of death. 
He has uttered the words, " Maid, I say unto thee, 
arise ; " and is in the act of lifting her from her couch 
by the hand. Again we see Him, in the next scene, 
turning the water into wine. And after that we behold 
Him at the grave of Lazarus, the stone rolled away, 
and he that had been dead four days coming forth. 
And this brings us to the last and greatest miracle 
of all. His own resurrection from the tomb. We see 
the women kneeling at the empty sepulchre, and the 
two angels above them, saying unto them, " He is not 
here. He is risen." The lesson of this window is, that 
Christ, the atoning Lamb, lias received all power in 



446 SERMONS. 

heaven and on earth. He has the keys of death and 
hell ; and all the laws and forces of nature are sub- 
ject to Him. He can lay down His life, and He can 
take it again. Having humbled Himself and become 
obedient unto the death of the cross, he is highly ex- 
alted ; there is nothing which does not bow to Him 
and confess that He is Lord. He is proved to be an 
all-sufficient Saviour. We can trust Him with an im- 
plicit faith. Our souls are forever safe in His keep- 
ing. He can remove our sins from us ; He can deliver 
us from the evils of the present life ; He can raise us 
from the dead, and present us faultless before His 
Father. We have no sorrows, no disappointments, 
no griefs or bereavements, in which we may not go 
to Him, assured that He is able to comfort us, and 
knowing that He will comfort us ; for how shall not 
He, who is the cross-bearing Lamb of God, be ready 
to exert all His power in behalf of those for whom He 
laid down His life ? 

6. And thus we come to the window in the south 
transept. In this window, representing the parables, 
Christ does not appear. You know He said to His 
disciples, it was expedient for them that He should 
go away, in order that the Holy Ghost might come 
upon them. Therefore the atoning Lamb vanishes 
out of sight when His wonderful works in the flesh 
are complete, and the quickening and sanctifying 
Spirit takes His place in the church. We see that 
Spirit, in the form of a dove, in the centre of the clus- 
ter at the top of the south window. He is descend- 
ing on open wings, as He descended at the time of 
Pentecost. Around this centre, in the other small 
windows, we see written the names of the seven car- 
dinal natural virtues, with their appropriate symbols. 



THE GOSPEL OF THE WINDOWS. 447 

They are wisdom, strength, fear, piety, understanding, 
cunning, counsel. All these are traits of the natural 
man at his best estate. And it is the Holy Spirit en- 
tering into the midst of these, exalting them, purify- 
ing them, and harmonizing them, which makes the 
new man in Clu-ist Jesus. Thus we have the germ of 
the Christian church ; and that church, as it exists in 
all ages, under the guidance of the Divine Spirit, is 
represented to us by the parables in the large window 
below. First we see the strong man, full -of youth 
and hope, going forth to sow. The sun is just rising 
upon him. The birds are busy by the wayside, the 
thorns and the stony places appear, and in the dis- 
tance we see a field of ripened grain. Thus does the 
Christian church, being full of the Holy Ghost, sow 
broadcast the word of God, — from its pulpit, in its 
Sunday-school and homes, and wherever through its 
members it may come into contact with men. By 
such means it is that the lost are found and saved. 
And hence we have, next, the returning prodigal. 
See him. He has come from the far country. His 
face is toward his father's house. Penitence and sor- 
row bow him down. He is weary of his sins, which 
filled him with husks and clothed him in rags. The 
father has come out to meet him, is falling on his 
neck, and they are mingling their kisses and tears. 
O happy church and happy pastor whose labors are 
thus blessed ! who do not toil in vain for the soids 
about them, but are permitted to see them coming, 
confessing that they have sinned, resolved to wander 
no longer, pleading that they may be admitted to the 
humblest place in God's family. The church is full 
of sympathy for all the unfortunate and wi'etched. 
And hence we have for our next scene the good 



448 SER3WNS. 

Samaritan. It is our office, dear brethren, to care for 
those for whom no one else cares. Only a faitliless 
church, out of which the Holy Spirit has departed, 
passes by on the other side of woe and suffering and 
want. All the unsaved, as we are to view them, have 
fallen among thieves. The darts of the Evil One 
have wounded them, and their own transgressions have 
brought them down into death. W,e are to lift them 
up, give them the wine of God's promises to drink, pour 
the oil oL Christ's love into their wounds, and tenderly 
care for them, till they shall have the witness in their 
souls that they are healed. And now we begin to 
draw toward death and the judgment-day. The story 
of the ten virgins lifts up before us its dread lesson. 
There is to be a separation. See them ! five admitted 
to the feast, with joy in their faces ; five excluded. 
What grief and agony and despair in these, who 
have arrived only to find that the door is shut ! Is 
there to be such a separation in this congregation ? 
in these homes, these circles of acquaintances and 
friends ? Who are the foolish and who are the wise ? 
The Holy Spirit, coming in the truth and the church, 
has spoken to us all. To what ones of our number 
is that word already a savor of life unto life, and to 
whom shall it prove a savor of death unto death ? 
But the last word of Christ to us, dear friends, is a 
word of comfort, of encouragement, of hope. Hence 
the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. They 
are returning in the evening, and the husbandman is 
giving to every one of them his penny. Yes, there is 
the eleventh-hour man; and he is receiving as much 
as they who have borne the heat and burden of the 
day. Christ, that is, freely and gladly saves all who 
enter His service. Have you wasted many years of 



THE GOSPEL OF THE WINDOWS. 449 

your life in worldliness and sin ? Do you feel that 
you have only a little longer to stay on the earth, and 
that the remnant of your days is not worth consecrat- 
ing to Christ? Nay, dear friends, take hope from 
this parable. Go ye in ; and Christ shall save you, as 
He saves all others. It is never too late till the door 
is shut ; never too late till the night has come ; never 
too late till the husbandman calls the laborers to 
reckon with them. But of that hour knoweth no 
man ; no, not even the angels of God. Therefore 
stand not all the day idle, but come at once into 
Christ's service while you may. " Now is the ac- 
cepted time," says this last word in the story of re- 
deeming love ; and all these windows, as you look 
round upon them and study the meaning of their 
divine messages, bring you up to this final point, 
and say unto you, " Behold, to-day is the day of sal- 
vation." 



I 



THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL BODY.^ 

For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dis- 
solved, we have a building" of God, a house not made with hands, eter- 
nal in the heavens. — 2 Cob. v. 1. 

" The Lord is risen ! " is the glad shout which to-day 
flies around the world on the wings of the morning. 
The Jewish calendar assures us that we do not mistake 
the time of our Lord's resurrection. This is indeed 
the true anniversary of that first day of the week in 
whose early twilight Mary saw the sepulchre empty 
and the two angels sitting, one at the head and the 
other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. 
He was not there, but had risen from the dead in a 
body which was no more subject to death. 

At this point, dear friends, the resurrection of 
Christ connects itself with our own resurrection in a 
most wonderful and gladdening way. His coming up 
out of the sepulchre is the proof that we shall not for- 
ever sleep in our graves. For He is the first-fruits of 
them that slept, and His resurrection body tells us 
what ours shall be. It was no truer of Him than it 
is to be of us, that we, as St. Paul puts the case in 
our text, shall lay aside this earthly tabernacle in 
which we now are, and be clothed upon with the house 
which is from heaven. How often we try to conjec- 
ture what the nature of the spiritual body is, and what 
kind of a life that is which we are to live in it ! The 

1 Preached Easter, April, 1879. 



THE NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL BODY. 451 

Bible gives us a great many hints on these points, sug- 
gestive of a blessedness more glorious than can be 
explained to us beforehand ; and of all those hints, 
perhaps none contains richer food for thought than 
the scripture before us. 

Let me call your attention a little to this figure, in 
which St. Paul likens our mortal body to a tabernacle 
and our spiritual body to a house, that we may enter 
into the glad spirit of the day, and join our voices 
with the ten thousand voices of field and forest and 
sky and flood which in this spring-time are coming out 
of their wintry silence and praising God. 

1. Most reassuring to us is it to notice, first, the 
clear distinction which the text makes between us and 
the body in which we are or are to be. It does not 
confound us either with the earthly tabernacle or the 
house from heaven. Our present identity does not 
cease when the tabernacle dissolves ; we do not take a 
new personality and have a new consciousness when 
we enter into the house. Our real self, that in us 
which says /, does not perish but lives on, forever 
knowing itself to be the same person which it has ever 
been, whether clothed with its natural or its spiritual 
body. You see in his use of the pronoun " we " how 
sharply St. Paul distinguishes between every man and 
the body in w^hich he dwells. The body may change, 
but the man is the same. One body may die and be laid 
aside, and another body take its place, but the indwell- 
ing man lives on unconscious of decay. We are dis- 
tinct from our bodies, dear friends, as the letter from 
its envelope, as the seed from its husk, as the light 
from the lantern through which it shines. It does not 
make you another person to move out of a tent into a 
house, and this is what happens when you exchange 



452 SERMONS. 

the flesUy for tlie spiritual body. You are still you. 
You have the same consciousness after you have moved 
which you before had. You say : " I find myself dif- 
ferently situated, furnished with better organs through 
which to act, no longer in a tent but in a house, but I 
am still I." Being the same person that you always 
were, your memory and all your other faculties do 
their office. You may increase in knowledge and wis- 
dom, and in your love of serving God, but it will all 
the time be you, not something else, which makes this 
blessed increase. In your body that shall be, you will 
not forget, any more than in your body which now is, 
nor as much. The spiritual organs through which 
you then will act may enable you to recall many things 
which your poor earthly frame has left you to forget. 
The shepherd boy does not forget his past life when 
he has become a king, nor the traveler his native land 
and its interests when he has passed to the other side 
of the globe. And so you, being still the same per- 
son, will associate with yourself all your life on earth 
when you have passed out of the earthly into the heav- 
enly. You will then know, better than you now know, 
all about your friendships, your relations, your achieve- 
ments, your sorrows and struggles in life. You will 
need there, as never here, a sight of the blood which 
cleanses from sin, that assurance of forgiveness which 
more than takes all the sting out of guilt, a firm con- 
fidence that only good can come to those who love 
God. Your essential needs as a rational and immor- 
tal soul will be the same in eternity as in time, your 
dangers and exposures to sin will be the same ; in 
Christ alone can you be then safe, as in Him alone 
you are now. You will there have the same powers 
of mind as here, only acting through a better organ- 



THE NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL BODY. 453 

ism, as a house is better than a tent ; you will still be 
the same person, designated, as properly as you ever 
were, by the name given you in your infancy. 

2. Another feature of the heavenly life which 
blooms out from this text is the continuance there of 
the same blessed service which should be the joy of all 
men here. The holy employment to which our Mas- 
ter has called us on earth will go on in heaven, only 
in a completer and nobler way. It is not certain that 
St. Paul had the ancient tabernacle and temple of the 
Jews in mind when he wrote, yet we may without vio- 
lence give his words that reference. He has told us 
in other places that our bodies are temples of God ; 
and if the natural body, much more the spiritual ; and 
certainly the spiritual exceeds the natural in glory 
and beauty as much as the temple at Jerusalem did 
the tabernacle in the wilderness. But the temple-ser- 
vice did not differ essentially from the tabernacle ser- 
vice. Even the two structures were not unlike in 
their general form and arrangement. Solomon did 
not depart from the patterns of things given to Moses 
in the mount. In both there was the great court to- 
wards the sun-rising, in which were the laver and the 
altar of burnt-sacrifices ; in both was the holy place, 
with the candlestick, the show-bread, and the altar of 
incense ; in both was the holy of holies, containing 
the ark of the covenant, into which the high-priest 
entered once a year. The sons of Aaron and the Le- 
vites ministered in the tabernacle just as in the temple. 
At first the worship was comparatively simple, as be- 
fitted the condition of the people journeying from 
Egypt to Canaan : yet it was not another worship, 
but the same, more elaborate and perfect, which was 
celebrated in the temple. The tabernacle decayed and 



454 SERMONS. 

was laid aside, and the glory of the Lord filled His 
house on Mount Moriah ; yet, in this as in that, were 
the morning and evening sacrifice, the solemn as- 
semblies, the rites, the services of thanksgiving and 
blessing, which Moses appointed. So with us, dear 
friends, when we leave our tabernacle and enter into 
our house. The house is to be a great deal more glo- 
rious than the tabernacle. Read the description of 
Solomon's Temple, and contrast it with the account of 
the tabernacle set up in the wilderness, if you would 
know how the heavenly body is to excel the earthly. 
The earthly is often beautiful, always so when lighted 
up by a pure spirit dwelling within it, but it is not 
the house, it is only the tabernacle. It is God's 
handiwork, fearfully and wonderfully made ; and 
though it is but a desert tent, compared to the house 
in the heavens, yet God has put us in it that we may 
do here the same service which will be our blessed 
emplojTuent there. We shall be the same beings, 
called to the same high service, in the heavenly temple 
as in the earthly tabernacle. It is clear, then, that 
the making of our future heaven must be largely our 
own work. If we do not learn to take delight in 
God's service, for which the earthly tabernacle is 
given, how can it be a joy to us when we have received 
the heavenly house ? If we do not make for ourselves 
a heaven here, what right have we to expect one any- 
where ? The conditions of our blessedness can never 
change. Our present unhappiness is not due to the 
earthly body, and our future happiness will not be due 
to the heavenly body. It is upon the soul within the 
body that all depends. All our wretchedness is due to 
our dislike of God's ways, and not till we have learned 
to say, " How amiable are thy tabernacles, Lord," 



THE NATURAL AND HPIRLTUAL BODY. 455 

can we hope for blessedness in the house not made 
with hands. The tabernacle and temple are not the 
same, but they resemble each other. Any one standing 
on Mount Moriah, and looking at the temple with its 
goodly stones and rich curtains and golden vessels 
and ornaments, would have been reminded of the tab- 
ernacle. And so the spiritual body, though not the 
same as the natural body, may resemble it ; may re- 
mind us of it, though unspeakably more radiant and 
noble, in such a way that we shall know in heaven 
those whom we have known on earth, friend recogniz- 
ing friend, and kindred their kindred, while all alike 
are still carrying forward that blessed work of God 
which they learned to love here below. 

3. The metaphor which St. Paul uses in our text, 
again, suggests that God is to be more central to our 
thoughts, and our worship of Him more fixed and 
abiding, in heaven than on earth. The temple had a 
centralizing power ; it unified the people of Israel as 
the tabernacle could not. That tabernacle was pitched 
now here and now there, as the exigencies of the na- 
tion required. They did not dwell so much as so- 
journ, while they lived in tents and worshiped in 
" the tent of meeting." Even in the land given to 
their fathers, they were not for a long time sure 
enough of their ground to build them houses to dwell 
in. The whole nation of Israel were unsettled, migra- 
tory, staying now here and now there, while the taber- 
nacle lasted and so long as they dwelt only in tents. 
And what was true of that nation is true of all na- 
tions. And what is true of whole races is true of 
families, of individuals. To live in tents is to live a 
moving, roving, shifting life. Nomadic tribes live in 
tents. The tents of Kedar, and the curtains of the 



456 SERMONS. 

land of Midian, tell us what were the habits of the 
people in those countries. Israel, during the forty 
years of desert life, moving from one camping-place to 
another, dwelt in tents. The house is the sign of 
rest, of a fixed abode. When David had rest from all 
his enemies round about him, he built him a house to 
dwell in. And this reminded him that the worship 
of God should no longer be in a tabernacle. Why 
should he live in a house and the ark of God be still 
within curtains ? He lived in tents before he came to 
the throne, he and his devoted adherents, while Saul 
was chasing them among the mountains ; but they ex- 
changed their tents for houses as soon as the land had 
rest and they were settled down to peaceful pursuits. 
The tent is the soldier's shelter while he is on his cam- 
paigns. It is the sign of struggle, of uncertainty, of 
sudden flights and marches, and movings to and fro. 
It speaks of a mode of life which is temporary, abnor- 
mal, unsatisfying. Now, how like our present life in 
the flesh all this is ! In this earthly tabernacle we 
groan. We are burdened with unsatisfied desires. 
We struggle and fight, and are driven about by fierce 
temptations. We have no rest. It is a life of toil 
and conflict. When one battle ends, another begins ; 
the warfare may change its form and appearance, but 
it does not end. There are foes within as fierce as 
any without. The perfect rest, the peace with no 
cloud out of the past or rising in the future, does 
not come. This is what we must endure in one way 
or another while we are in the tabernacle. But the 
house in the heavens, the spiritual body, tells us an- 
other lesson. When we pass into that our rest comes. 
We are of the church triumphant, no more of the 
church militant. The two hosts are but one, and all 



THE NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL BODY. 457 

their service is essentially one service of God, yet how 
different that life from this ! how vastly more full, 
satisfying, unchanging ! as much greater and more 
blessed than this as your houses are better than the 
soldier's tent, as the costly Temple of Solomon was 
better than the tabernacle in the wilderness ! There 
you will not be tossed up and down, will not be led 
astray by temptation, will not be driven to and fro by 
the hosts of evil. You will have found your fixed 
abode, you will rove no more, you will abide in God, 
and His words will abide in you. All your life through 
those eternal ages will be like the flow of a river 
which has come out of its mad conflict with rocks and 
cliffs and headlands, and which moves on majestic, 
peaceful, and free through the bright plains. That life 
in the spiritual body flows, forever flows ; yet it is 
ever finding its rest in Christ, as the river is at rest 
in the sea. So blessed, so great, so satisfying and 
unchanging is the life on which St. Paul looked when 
he said, " We know that if our earthly house of this 
tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, 
a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 
4. These words of the apostle remind us, fourthly, 
that the idea of home which we all have and vainly 
seek to realize on earth will be fully and blessedly 
realized in heaven. Our life in the spiritual body will 
bring us to the realization of all our ideals. We have 
ideals of a perfect state of society, of a perfect church 
and family, of peace, of purity, of beauty, of order, 
of goodness, which in this life are all the time hover- 
ing before us. We reach out after them, and yearn 
to see them becoming real in us and in the world, but 
we cannot grasp them ; they are within the realm of 
the unattained. So the word " home " suggests to us 



458 SERMONS. 

sometMng which our best earthly homes have not yet 
fully realized. The perfect home after which our 
hearts reach out and yearn is yet to come. We are 
strangers, sojourners, pilgrims ; we are traveling to- 
wards our native country. There is a constant home- 
sickness within us, and that for which we most deeply 
sigh is not behind us, but always before us. Though 
we may regret the joys of other days, or are saddened 
to find ourselves growing old, yet that which is deep- 
est in us is all the time reaching forward ; the home 
which shall satisfy us is yet to come ; will not be 
reached till we have entered the spiritual body. How 
befitting to all this is the imagery of our text ! It is 
our tent-life which we are now living. We journey 
on towards the " Home, sweet home," for which our 
hearts hunger. When we lie down at night, it is our 
sweetest thought of the day just gone that we have 
" pitched our tents a day's march nearer home." We 
do not reach it, but only go towards it, moving the 
tabernacle with us. Though we build us great houses, 
and fill them with pleasant things, or though we live 
in ancestral mansions in the midst of ancient parks 
and gardens, they do but foreshadow to us our real 
homes ; they belong to our tabernacle life, and point 
on to the house not made with hands. How true this 
is may be seen in the multitude of hymns and poems 
of which it is the theme. That we are absent from 
our true homes in these fleshly bodies, and find them 
only as we pass into the body which is spiritual, is a 
truth so native to our minds, and so mingled with all 
our pleasant and poetic dreams, that one can hardly 
speak of it without seeming to sink into mere senti- 
ment and cant. But men cannot let this subject alone. 
Though they are silent about it, their thoughts will at 



THE NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL BODY. 459 

times be busied with it. They may make many wild 
and even puerile conjectures about the employments 
of heaven, what the resurrection really is, when it 
takes place, what is the nature of the spiritual body, 
where heaven is, or whether it is anywhere in partic- 
ular ; but they will go on doing this, however reason 
may seem to convict them of its folly, driven to it by 
that inward yearning for the ideal home which is an 
essential part of every man's nature. No truer or 
safer words concerning that home were ever spoken 
than those of our text. It is a house. Here we have 
but tents, tabernacles. This is not the soul's home. 
We need here something which we can take along 
with us on the road, which can be easily set up or 
folded together, which we can each day pitch farther 
forwards ; but we shall lay it aside when the bright 
doors of our eternal homes have been shut behind us, 
when we have passed into the house with which we 
are to be clothed upon from heaven. 

5. The frailty of the bodies we now have, and 
the enduring vigor and strength of those in which we 
shall be, is also vividly suggested to us by the im- 
agery of the text. No tent or tabernacle which is in 
constant use can last a great while, but there are 
houses and temples still standing which were built in 
the days of the patriarchs. But not even houses of 
stone, such as men build, can adequately prefigure the 
lasting beauty and freshness of the spiritual body. 
We fall short in describing that house, as in describ- 
ing the heavenly city, though we call to our aid the 
most costly and imperishable things of this world, all 
manner of precious stones, the jasper, sapphire, 
chalcedony, and emerald, the sardonyx, sardius, chry- 
solite, and beryl, the topaz, the chrysoprasus, the ja- 



460 SERMONS. 

cinth, and the amethyst, the transparent glass, the sil- 
ver, the gold, and the pearl. Our imagination lays 
hold of these, yet they all but dimly foreshadow what 
the house from heaven is. St. Paul heightens our 
conception of it by the contrast which he uses. Not 
only is that the house and this the tabernacle, but this 
is earthly, while that is heavenly and is the building 
of God. The body in which we now are was taken 
out of the ground, and shall return to it, but that in 
which we shall be is of nobler substance. God makes 
it, and clothes the spirit which is freed from earth 
with it, so that it is called His building. And not 
only that, but it is eternal : no earthly mixture in it, 
but purely of celestial substance, the building of God, 
the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 
We are now bearing the image of the earthly, but we 
must also bear the image of the heavenly. After that 
which is natural will come that which is spiritual. 
We have been sown in corruption, but must be raised 
in incorruption ; in weakness, but must be raised in 
power ; we have been sown in dishonor, but must be 
raised in glory. It is not we but our dwelling that 
changes. The earthly tabernacle which is flesh and 
blood cannot iuherit the kingdom of God. It must 
be laid aside, changed for the house which is eternal, 
if not by the slower processes of nature, then in a mo- 
ment, in the twinkling of an eye, when the trumpet 
shall sound. 

Just where it is, or how it is, that this glorious trans- 
formation takes place, I do not undertake to say. I 
only know that the spiritual body which is eternal is 
God's building. Whether it is in us now, to be set 
free at death, or is kept on high for us, to be given us 
when we quit this pilgrim's tent, I know not, though 



THE NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL BODY. 461. 

the words of Scripture seem to me rather to favor 
this latter impression. It is not easy for me to think 
of the spiritual body as now within the natural, but 
as prepared and waiting for us in the heavens.^ Do 
not our Lord's words favor this impression where He 
says, " Make to yourselves friends . . . who, when your 
earthly tabernacles fail, shall receive you into ever- 
lasting habitations." Nor can I feel that the frail 
earthly body, which we tenderly place within the 
"low green tent " when it falls away from the soul, 
wholly perishes. I cannot say, with one of our best 
poets, that the curtain of that low tent "never out- 
ward turns." The sacred instinct within us, which 
leads us to guard and adorn our cemeteries, seems to 
me to speak of a resurrection morning when the graves 
shall be opened, and they that sleep shall come forth. 
We may all miss the exact truth as to the resurrection 
of the body. I only know that our faith has some 
kernel of beauty and glory in it ; that not less won- 
derfully, but more wonderfully than we dream, all 
which the Bible says of our present bodies and their 
resurrection from the dead shall be fulfilled. Yet I 
have an equally strong faith that, as our ancient con- 
fessions say, "the souls of the righteous do at death 
immediately pass into glory." I cannot believe that 
they are lingering somewhere between the tabernacle 
and the house ; I must think of them as already in 
the building of God which is eternal in the heavens. 
They are the same persons now which they were while 
they tabernacled with us, and their worship and ser- 
vice of God are essentially the same. They are now 
singing, only in louder and sweeter strains, the hymns 

^ Thoii sowest not that body that shall be, but God giveth a body 
as it hath pleased Him. 



462 SERMONS. 

of praise to the Lamb in which we join. Our strong 
helpers, our friends, the loved and venerated, our chil- 
dren full of budding promise, who have fallen on the 
way as we all must fall, who were called at midnight, 
and 

" whose tent at sunrise on the ground. 
A darkened ruin lay," 

have entered into the full enjoyment of the ideal 
home. The glad Easter morning which the bursting 
flowers welcome, the stir and murmur of the fields and 
streams, the many-throated song within the deepening 
veil of the woods, combine with the blessed word of 
God and our sacred heart-hunger to assure us that it 
is well with the good whom we miss from their places 
to-day, and that our own walk with Christ is taking 
us on out of the imperfect towards the perfect. To 
the tabernacle succeeds the house. At the end of 
the pilgrimage we pass into the eternal home. " And 
there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor cry- 
ing, neither shall there be any more pain." 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS, AND THE SOCIAL 
IDEAL.i 

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the first heaven 
and the first earth were passed away ; and there was no more sea. — 
Rev. xxi. 1. 

No man has ever yet doubted that some such bless- 
edness as these words foretell is in store for our 
world. It is one of the sacred beliefs of the human 
heart, that the scattered races of mankind shall be one 
day brought together into a single family. This faith 
is intuitional ; it is born with us, like the faith in our 
own immortality, or in the existence and omnipresence 
of a God of love. Before the light of the gospel had 
dawned on men, poets sang of the golden age to come, 
and philosophers tried to tell what it should be or be 
like. It is one of the chief themes of prophecy in the 
Old Testament as well as in the New. The whole 
Bible, but perhaps more especially the last book of it, 
is a divine Amen to our instinctive faith in the broth- 
erhood of mankind. Through all literature, whether 
ancient or modern, through all thinking, through all 
statesmanship, all business, all life, this sacred yearn- 
ing is breathed ; and while the universal voice is going 
up, saying, " How long, O Lord, how long ! " the re- 
sponse of God is clear, full, unmistakable. That be- 
lief in the future perfection of man and of human 
societ}^, which cannot be uprooted in our hearts, does 

1 Preached hefore the American Board of Commissioners for For- 
eign Missions, October 5, 1880. 



464 SERMONS. 

not deceive us. The glorious day to whicli it turns 
forward our wistful eyes is surely coming, coming, 
coming ! God keeps the times and seasons in His own 
power. One day is with Him as a thousand years, 
and a thousand years as one day. But His servant 
John, whom He inspired to show unto us what should 
be in the end of the world, says : "I saw a new heaven 
and a new earth : for the first heaven and the first 
earth were passed away ; and there was no more sea." 

By " a new heaven and a new earth " we are to 
understand the whole race of mankind, morally and 
spiritually renewed. The passing away of " the first 
heaven and the first earth " signifies that the present 
divided and hostile condition of the races of men shall 
give way to a universal reign of peace and goodwill. 
And in the striking picture of a world in which there 
is " no more sea " is assured to us the mastery of all 
natural forces as well as all moral and spiritual, so 
that mankind shall no more be kept from coming to- 
gether into that brotherhood of love in which they 
cannot but believe, and for which they instinctively 
yearn. 

The sea offered only images of terror to the mind 
of those to whom St. John wrote. It bounded the 
known world. They peopled with direful fancies the 
regions which lay beyond its distant rim. Meaning 
by the word " sea " the Mediterranean, with which 
they were chiefly conversant, it would suggest to them 
ideas of distance and separation ; long and perilous 
voyages, which would not bring them to friends, but 
to savage and hostile tribes. 

No doubt all these ideas were in the mind of the 
rapt seer when he used his beautiful image. He is 
carried forward by the Spirit of God into the time 



CHRISTIAN MISSIO^S. 465 

when Christ shall be the universal King. It is the 
glory and blessedness of that day which his vivid fig- 
ure paints. He means to say that a time is coming, 
in the history of our world, when the dominion of 
man over nature shall be complete, the sea even not 
blocking the pathways of his love ; when he shall re- 
gard no place as the abode of mystery or danger ; and 
when that separation, difficulty of access, and hostility 
which now divide the nations from one another, and 
of which the sea is a striking symbol, shall give place 
to an easy, brotherly, and uniformly delightful inter- 
course among all the inhabitants of our globe. 

The march of the human family toward this blessed 
state began in the dawn of history and is still going 
forward. Let me speak to you a little of the means 
by which the great renovation is to come about : first, 
of some of the natural and human means ; secondly, 
of the supernatural, as seen in the gospel, or more 
especially in the work of Christian missions. 

One of the first class of means, which has done 
much and may yet do something toward bringing our 
race together into a brotherhood of love, is geographi- 
cal discovery. Man's knowledge of the new world he 
had been bidden to subdue and have dominion over 
was for a long time partial and vague. Each knew 
his own neighborhood, but there was no common 
knowledge shared by all. As men scattered abroad 
after the confusion of tongues, they did not send back 
reports of themselves, and early traditions grew dim ; 
hence in a few centuries the Old World was peopled 
with tribes who knew almost nothing of one another. 
But in due time journeys, and even voyages, of dis- 
covery began to be made. Adventurous men went 
forth to search out the lands, and they returned to 



466 SERMONS. 

tell what they had found. Thus the small circle of 
geography, which had been each man's world, began 
to be widened. The dwellers in Egypt, Syria, and 
Midian heard that they were neighbors to one an- 
other ; and they sought intercourse, though chiefly for 
plunder and blood. The islands of the sea, also, and 
the remotest parts of the continents, were brought 
gradually within the circle of this common knowledge. 
Thus that vagueness and fear which had been con- 
nected with the idea of distance began to yield to a 
pleasant curiosity and the feeling of society. The 
shepherd of Mesopotamia felt less alone at knowing 
that other hearts, precisely like his own, were beat- 
ing far up the Nile, on the table-lands of China, 
throughout the wilds of Europe, and on the bosom of 
that great deep whose terrible majesty filled him with 
awe. But vastly more toward bringing the earth's 
surface to the knowledge of all men has been done in 
modern times. Columbus and his successors robbed 
the sea of its mystery. The exact form and size of 
the earth have been found out. Not an islet glitters 
on the surface of the blue waters but some one has 
seen and reported it. Wherever man can live, this 
work of discovery has been done ; and now, in the 
central parts of Africa, and toward the northern and 
the southern pole, the work is going on, sure not to 
stop till the last corner, and shore, and height, and 
fastness of the earth have been forced to give up their 
secrets. This genius of discovery ranges the earth as 
the astronomer's glass sweeps the heavens. It is rap- 
idly filling up the blanks on our maps. It is giving 
to all parts of the world a reality and nearness in our 
thoughts, which tend to take from man everywhere his 
sense of loneliness or isolation. 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 467 

Another natural means of bringing men together 
into fraternal relations has been the establishment of 
colonies. This adds a tie which mere discovery could 
not give ; the attachment, namely, to a common an- 
cestry. Though every man is our brother, and in the 
broadest sense we cannot speak of different ancestors, 
yet there is a peculiar interest binding together those 
who think of the same country as their fatherland, or 
who are alike warmed with the blood of some heroic 
stock whose origin and fame they can distinctly trace. 
The Phoenician colonies, along the southern shore of 
the Mediterranean, were drawn to one another as the 
native tribes could not be ; for, with a common affec- 
tion, they remembered the mother city. So when that 
migTation southward from the northern border of 
Greece began, and the isthmus below Corinth and 
the islands near its coast were settled by people claim- 
ing a common lineage, the new cities entered into fra- 
ternal alliances more or less wide, before which the 
first owners of the soil melted away. And this broth- 
erhood of states went on increasing for a long time, 
gaining for itself footholds in new lands, held to- 
gether by the belief in their oneness of race. This 
tie of kindred has steadily grown more powerful as 
the world has grown older. And it is not impossible 
that the time will come, in the blessed future open- 
ing before us, when all mankind, however scattered 
abroad, will trace their lineage to a single source ; all 
decaying tribes having wasted away before the one 
dominating people which turns proudly to a single 
origin and to a single career among the nations. 
From the sources of the Amazon, out of the rich val- 
leys of Central Africa and the uplands of Asia, from 
the sides of the North, the blooming prairie, and the 



468 SERMONS. 

coral islands of the Pacific, threads of tender remem- 
brance may draw all hearts toward a common centre 
of name and traditions. 

In the work of reuniting the scattered fragments of 
humanity, commerce also bears a notable part. The 
arrangement of things in the world is such that what 
nature and labor produce in one country are taken to 
other countries for the promotion of the common wel- 
fare. Hence the business of carrying, — the commerce 
whose lines run in all directions and cross one another 
at almost every point of the earth's surface. The 
ships sailing on the remotest sea are bringing each 
nation of men into kindly relations with the entire 
world. An emperor on the continent of Europe dare 
not begin a war till he knows how it will affect the 
merchants of Canton, London, and San Francisco. 
Nothing that makes trade unprofitable, or that inter- 
feres greatly with it, wdll be long tolerated. There 
are but few nations now which refuse to come into 
this world-congress of exchangers, — this brotherhood 
of buyers and sellers all over the earth, who control 
kings and presidents and lawgivers. It cannot be 
denied that the Sandwich Islands were the sooner re- 
deemed from barbarism by lying as they did in the 
highway of the world's commerce. Let any country 
succeed in opening a thrifty trade between its own 
ports and the ports of other countries, a trade whose 
profits are equal to all concerned, and it needs little 
other warrant that its rights ^vill be respected. The 
Hottentot can bear no hatred toward the Englishman 
who takes his ivory and gives him its full value in use- 
ful fabrics. The ice-dealer of Bombay is on friendly 
terms with the New England shipper. The shoe- 
makers of Lynn are interested in the success of the 



CHSISTIAN MISSIONS. 469 

South American hunter. An untimely frost in a 
Western valley, or a flood in France, or a tribal war 
in Asia, or the burning of a great city, is often a 
world-wide calamity. Rich men whose homes are in 
Paris have been made poor by a drought in New York 
or Ohio. Places of abode are changed for life, — the 
Turk dwelling in Boston, and the Bostonian in Con- 
stantinople ; the New Yorker making Shanghai his 
home, and the Chinaman residing in New York. 
Thus it is that all nations, both the civilized and the 
barbarous, make one community ; and it is for the 
interest of each of the individuals so connected that 
peace and goodwill should everywhere exist. 

In naming the more obvious means by which the 
scattered tribes of men have been brought near to each 
other, the applications of scientific discovery should not 
be forgotten. The seaports of the Old World are not 
half so far from us as they once were, owing to the use 
of steam. And of the telegraph we may say that it 
has more than annihilated space, both on the land 
and on the sea. The electric current is swifter than 
the earth's motion ; it steals a march on time ; what 
took place in the far-off Orient we read of at an 
earlier hour of our day. This swift spreading of the 
news to all points of the earth is a terror to evil-doers. 
It helps the cause of justice and goodwill. There is 
no place where the worker of iniquity can hide himself 
save by the connivance of faithless officials. When 
he steps in disguise on the remotest shore, a warrant 
of arrest may meet him. Wonderful as all this is, yet 
who doubts that science has other secrets to declare ? 
Wisdom will not die with us. That torch of inventive 
genius which the former times have given to us, we 
shall hand on to those who succeed us. Human inge- 



470 SERMONS. ^ 

nuity will not rest till the basis of a world-wide inti- 
macy among men has been laid. It will be because 
they wish to dwell apart, hated and hating one an- 
other, if they fail to come together into an all-embrac- 
ing brotherhood. 

And just here it is, dear friends, that we see the 
need of an agency which is above nature or man's 
power, to change the selfishness of the human heart 
into the spirit of love. That spirit brought down to 
us in Christ Jesus, and given to His people to be spread 
through the world, is the only power which can make 
one family of all the tribes of men. God himself 
must make the nations one by giving to them His Son. 
The triumph of the gospel everywhere, and especially 
in the form of Christian missions, is our only hope 
that the golden age of love, of which the poet and 
philanthropist dream, will ever dawn. The spirit of 
Christ in His church, carrying the life of God to every 
creature, alone can give the new heaven and the new 
earth. You will admit that I have not undervalued 
ordinary causes, as preachers are sometimes charged 
with doing. In considering how St. John's vision is 
to be realized, I have given due credit to discovery, 
emigration, commerce, and the better control of nat- 
ural forces. But a great work still remains undone, 
which nothing in nature or man shows any signs of 
accomplishing. The union which they bring about is 
based on self-interest, and is wholly unstable. An- 
other law of action, even that love and self-sacrifice 
which came down from heaven, must be planted in 
men's hearts, in order to make them in deed and in 
truth one family. 

Let me show, then, why Christian missions, embody- 
ing as they do the spirit of divine love, tend directly 
to bring mankind together into a single brotherhood. 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 471 

They proceed on the principle of sacrifice, — are a 
constant laying* down of life for the good of others. 
This is true from the centre to the circumference of the 
work. Starting from each home office, and going out 
on all sides, we find at every step, and in the farthest 
mission field, self-denial and self-sacrifice. There is an 
outlay of time, strength, and sympathy, for which no 
worldly return is sought or expected. Poor widows give 
their farthings, and others their larger sums ; families 
live on inadequate salaries, uncounted hours are taken 
from business, days of prayer and nights of anxiety 
are spent, and no reward is thought of or desired. It 
is all bread taken from the mouth at the Lord's bid- 
ding and cast upon the waters, not to be gathered again 
until the eternal shore is reached. Is it for their owu 
sake, think you, that the young husband and wife, 
standing on the vessel's deck after the parting hymn 
has been sung, turn their faces whithersoever the spirit 
sends them ? Is it for any selfish reason that the aged 
parents, who have reared them so tenderly, watch the 
lessening sail, and wave their tearful good-by as it 
vanishes from their view ? Do they find any return, 
as the world counts dividends, in going back to look 
at the pictures of their departed children, and to 
speak their loved names ? " Not for our sake, but for 
the sake of those who know not Christ," is the answer 
which confounds the selfish man when he asks, '' Why 
this waste ? " Follow that little ship's company on the 
way. Hear them speak of early associations, of the 
family circlo, the school, the friends, the familiar trees 
about the homestead, the loved streams of water, the 
grand old mountains. " What induced you to give up 
all that peace and sweetness of life amid the glorious 
surroundings of your birthplace ? " we ask. There is 



472 SERMONS. 

a swelling of great emotions within them as they hear 
the question ; and with brimming yet brave and up- 
turned eyes they say : " We go to seek those for whom 
our Lord died." Is it a pleasure to them to be con- 
fronted daily with strange, wild faces, to miss the dear 
mother-tongue, to be obliged to preach the blessed 
words of Christ in an uncouth and inadequate dialect ? 
Look thi-ough their dwelling : its furniture spoiled by 
the heat of the climate, or its wallls not able to keep 
out the wintry wind; greedy insects invading every 
corner of it, poisonous reptiles crawling over and 
around it, hungry beasts of prey stealthily watching 
in the jungle hard by, its table spread with food which 
only their wish to be strong for their self-denying work 
can make palatable. "Does this pay?" you ask. 
"Not as the money-changers reckon pay," they an- 
swer. "But we," they add, "have another motive: 
w^e are to Christ a willing sacrifice, to be used of Him 
in planting here His saving gospel." Think you that 
no struggle takes place in them when they are forced 
to send their children home to be educated ? Is it such 
a motive as you act from in secular aif airs, which per- 
suades them to let their families be broken up ? which 
strengthens them to lie down and die alone, beneath 
the ice-hills of Greenland, on the banks of the Gaboon 
river, or within the suif ocating walls of Mosul ? You 
behold here a new and marvelous power at work in the 
world ; something which is above man or nature, which 
came from the God who is love. Here is no thirst for 
fame, glory, or riches, but a longing to be offered up 
for the good of others. This spirit is not due to com- 
merce, to science, to the finding and peopling of new 
lands. It is the spirit of the gospel, for lack of which 
the world has been full of discord. Everything which 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 473 

seemed to favor universal peace and goodwill has been 
spoiled b^ some element of self-interest. But here self 
is devoted to the wellbeing of those who cannot repay ; 
and we all see that this spirit, if made everywhere dom- 
inant, cannot but bring all men into one brotherhood. 
It is the same spirit out of which God sent His Son 
into the world; and out of which the Son was obe- 
dient unto death, even the death of the cross. This 
Entire freedom from self-seeking, this eagerness not to 
be ministered unto but to minister, this lowliness and 
suffering for the sake of others, which the mighty men 
of the world have never shown, but which is the spirit 
of Christian missions, is our only hope of the new 
heaven and the new earth. How can there be any war, 
or oppression, or other abuse of man by man, where 
each one is seeking not his own, and no one owes any- 
thing but to love his brother? Such a spirit is all- 
powerful ; it tames ferocity, it melts the icy heart, it 
overawes wickedness. Christ's kingdom, the kingdom 
of suffering for the good of others, though the least of 
all seeds in the beginning, is our only reliance if the 
races of men are ever to become a single family ; for 
nowhere else do we find that self -surrender and toiling 
for our neighbor's good which are the only possible 
basis of a real and enduring brotherhood. 

But facts, no less than the spirit of missions, show 
that they can make mankind one family. 

The true churches of Christ are already made one 
by their endeavor to give the gospel to every creature. 
Persons interested in the same objects, and having 
knowledge of each other, are one in heart, however 
scattered in space. To them there is no more sea, or 
separating distance ; for the electric chain of sympathy 
makes them one. There is a republic of letters, of 



474 SERMONS. 

science, of art, — each world-wide. But these frater- 
nities do not rest on a permanent basis, foa? they do 
not grow out of unselfish suffering ; the spirit which 
pervades them is not that of the gospel. The fellow- 
ship of missions is as enduring as the soul of man ; 
it is deep, sweet, tender, beyond the power of anything 
to disturb. This gentle and pervasive love, whose 
golden threads go through the world, is revealing itself 
more and more. When the states and kingdoms are 
in commotion, hurricanes of war screaming through 
the sky, this soft melody of Christian hearts is un- 
interrupted ; and if we lay our ear low and hearken 
patiently, we can hear its breathings, the faint prelude 
of a mighty anthem, heralding the reign of the Prince 
of Peace. 

There is another fact of most touching interest, 
which shows how Christian missions are making all 
lands one. Almost every Christian, in every part of 
the world, has some kinsman or near friend toiling on 
the other side of the globe ; or, may be, already sleep- 
ing in Jesus, where he fell, on some remote continent 
or island, or within the still depths of the sea. There 
are those in New England who think tenderly of St. 
Helena, of the Isle of France, of the hills of Nestoria, 
of the widely scattered lands made dear to them by 
the kindred dust of a Hall, a Judson, or a Boardman, 
a Grant, a Lobdell, a Benjamin, a Goodell, a Scudder, 
a Poor. These lines of affection, making foreign soil 
native, go out all ways and to the remotest points ; and 
to the heart which thus loves and communes there is no 
more sea. You mock it, denying its own sweet wit- 
ness, if you say that it is not one with its kindred who 
have died in Christ. It lingers near the burial-ground 
of Batticotta in the twilight hour, and is soothed by 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 475 

the spicy breezes wliicli blow soft from Ceylon's Isle. 
It walks tliroiigli the exhumed palaces of Nineveh, 
and looks wistfully out on the lowly grave-stones beside 
the Tigris. It sits beneath the cedars of Lebanon, 
and hears in the sighing of their branches the voice 
of its own communion. The cocoa and the palm, 
though as far as the East and the West from it, are 
its own trees. For it is the cemeteries, the places 
where our own kindred sleep, wliicli oiu* hearts spe- 
cially claim ; there we dwell, oftentimes more truly 
than where we are visibly present. Thus every con- 
tinent and island and valley and mountain, around 
and all over the world, is fast becoming fatherland 
and home to the brotherhood of Christian hearts. 
Oiir self-love and patriotism are widening into an 
affection which embraces the world ; into that holy 
and divine love which will not rest from its blessed 
ministry till the lowest child of Adam has found the 
tree of life ; till all nations are of one heart and one 
speech, and the soul of a brother looks out from every 
eye, and to live is to serve, and to labor is to love. 

That the spirit of Christian missions is able to do 
this, is foreshadowed by what they have already done. 
Whatever they touch, they consecrate and make im- 
mortal. Go to Williamstown, and you will be shown 
the sj)ot where Mills and his associates met to pray. 
That spot, more than the college, makes the name of 
the toAvn dear in all lands. Go to Andover, and they 
will remind you that there those missionaries studied. 
Go to Salem, and it will be said to you, " Here the 
first missionaries were ordained." I have met a ship- 
master who remembered with pride that the first mis- 
sionaries to the Sandwich Islands sailed with him. 
There are thousands of men and women living in the 



476 SERMONS. 

far-off East and on the islands of the sea, who know 
Boston only as the place from which missionaries are 
sent. 

What marvelous power the Christian missionary 
has ! The memory of David Brainerd is to-day a con- 
verting power, and Henry Martyn helps hold the uni- 
versity of Cambridge to the foundations of its faith 
in Christ. The power of such men is not merely nat- 
ural ; it is supernatural. Their strength may be small, 
and they may be young and without earthly prestige, 
yet the life of Christ has through their consecration 
to Him filled them, and by them He speaks, as never 
man spake, to His brethren sitting in darkness. The 
poor idolater sees in them a love not born of man but 
of God, and he gladly takes the message of salvation 
which they bring him from the Father of His spirit. 
I doubt not there are some in this assembly who have 
been welcomed where the ambassadors of no civil 
power would be safe. Those of us who have read the 
life of David livingstone cannot doubt that, if there 
were a hundred such as he in Africa, a hundred such 
as he in China, in Japan, a hundred such as he in 
Turkey, in India, in Burmah, all preaching Jesus 
Christ as the one hope and King of men, the great 
multitude whose voice is as the voice of mighty thun- 
derings would soon be heard, saying, " Alleluia, for 
the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth." 

Read the story of Coleridge Patteson, late bishop 
of the English church at the Melanesian Islands, if 
you would know what the missionary spirit may do for 
a man. He was the son of Sir John Patteson, born 
so recently as 1827, brought up to all the elegances 
and costly pleasures usual to the homes of the Eng- 
lish nobility. He was a scholar at Eton when Victoria 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 477 

came to the throne, — a favorite of teachers and class- 
mates, and their petted champion on the cricket-field. 
From this proud school under the shadow of Windsor 
Castle he went to Oxford, the holy fire of missions 
already burning in his heart. Upon graduating, he 
turned his back on all the pride and glory of English 
high life, and went in the spirit of Christ and His 
cross to as wretched a set of tribes as can be found 
on the earth. Far to the southeast of Australia, in 
his little ship which he named the Southern Cross, he 
toiled from island to island, devoting his whole earthly 
fortune to the work, — carpenter, mason, gardener, and 
farmer, cook and seamster and nurse and doctor, stu- 
dent, translator, teacher, catechist, minister ; declining 
to return home, asking that his portion of the estate 
might be given to his mission. Thus he bore up 
through loneliness, against opposition, under disease, 
till at last, in the freshness of his glorious manhood, 
the natives who loved him, unfortunately mistaking 
him for a slave-hunter known to be prowling around, 
suddenly rushed upon him out of an ambush as he 
was one day lea\dng his ship, and took his life before 
he could tell them who he was. One such heroic life 
as that is worth a thousand lives dawdled away in lux- 
urious ease. Jesus Christ formed within him made 
him such a centre of attraction, and such an uplifting 
and purifying power, as promised in a little while to 
make all those poor savages one fold under the one 
Di^ane Shepherd. 

If you still doubt the power of this all-devoting 
love, which is the soul of missions, to tame wild natives 
and make them one family, read the story of Miss 
Pattison, " Sister Dora," in the festering dens and 
hospitals of Walsall, England, It was the missionary 



478 SERMONS. 

spirit which, in that nominally Christian but degraded 
and wicked city, made her the adored queen whose 
word was law to the brutal and vicious creatures about 
her. What a day it was on which she was buried ! 
The confused roar of machinery and the thud and 
clang of steam-hammers ceased. The chimneys of 
furnaces and foundries belched forth no flames that 
day. Only a heavy cloud of smoke lay like a pall 
on the great sooty town. Wretched toilers swarmed 
forth by the thousand and ten thousand, their hearts 
bowed by the magic power of her all-devoting love, as 
the trees of the wood are bowed by the wind. 

Ah, dear friends, the true missionary is clothed 
with a sacredness which awes the roving child of the 
desert. His spirit of love teaches the wild Koord to 
be kind and merciful. His one thought of saving 
others, at the risk of his own life, charms the Hindoo 
mind away from superstition and bloody rites. How 
often kings have besought his good offices in treating 
with the savage chiefs whom they would win to 
friendly alliance ! The deadly intolerance of Islam is 
yielding in the presence of the heavenly love which 
he brings to it. Chinese exclusiveness levels its walls 
at the approach of a pure gospel. Japan, her heart 
thrilled by the morning beams of Christianity, is send- 
ing her brightest minds to be moulded by its hand, 
and these are carrying more and more of the spirit of 
redemption back into their marvelous country. This 
missionary work, which all who understand it so 
eagerly welcome, has already begun to make strange 
races to be of one heart and one mind. Great is the 
work which has been already done. Yet the near fu- 
ture gives promise of something vastly greater. God 
is opening doors into all lands, where eager hands are 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 479 

stretched out to receive the blessing. Let all Chris- 
tians give to this blessed work according to their re- 
sources, and toil in it as they have the opportunity 
and power, and the day is not far off when the one 
kingdom w^hich all other kingdoms are to help make 
up shall be proclaimed. The jearning of the human 
heart for fellowship wdth all other hearts shall be met. 
Every man's love shall find completeness in the ocean 
of universal love. God, who is all, shall be in all ; 
and this divine indwelling shall make all one ; there 
shall be neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, 
bond nor free, but all shall be one, and shall grow up 
together into Christ, who is the Head. 

What occasion have we, dear friends, to. doubt that 
the Holy Spirit, in whose dispensation we are now liv- 
ing, is fully able to renew our entire world? Are we 
not doing dishonor to His blessed name and office 
when we say that Christ must again visibly come, 
take from tlie Holy Spirit His unfinished work, and 
Himself complete the bringing together of mankind in 
Him ? Is it not enough that the Comforter takes of 
Christ and shows to men, and convinces them of sin 
and righteousness and judgment ; but must He be 
thrust out of His office, and Christ do what He has 
failed to accomplish, before the world can be con- 
verted to God ? This certainly is not the view which 
Christ Himself gave when He told His disciples it was 
expedient for them that He should go away, since if 
He went not away the Comforter would not come. 
What mean those words, and the greater works than 
His of which He spoke, if the Holy Spirit is not ade- 
quate to all the wants of the church in carrying out 
our Lord's last command ? The nature of the gospel 
and the history of its progress thus far ought to con- 



480 SERMONS. 

vince us that tlie present dispensation of grace is 
enough for all the work we are to do. Going outside 
of the church;, in the province of civil affairs, think 
v/hat a blessed contrast between the present state of 
things and that which prevailed even so late as three 
centuries ago ! In all domestic legislation and in in- 
ternational law there has been a wonderful advance, 
and this advance has been a steady approach toward 
the teachings of Christ. Nations are growing more 
and more ashamed of anything on their statute-books 
or in their administration which the spirit of the 
gospel forbids. Ah, dear friends, we put asunder 
church and state, but Christ knows which is His ! 
They were both ordained of God, nor can we say that 
either of them alone represents the one kingdom into 
which all other kingdoms are to be absorbed. The 
present religious sects may fade away, and it may be 
some form of civil power embodying the spirit of 
the New Testament, and world-wide in sway, which 
Christ shall own as His universal church when He 
comes in the clouds of heaven. 

At any rate, whether we study the history of the 
state or the church, we find bright proofs that all the 
aid needed for the conversion of the world is now at 
our command. You cannot conceive of any more 
marvelous victories of the gospel under some dispen- 
sation yet to come than took place in the apostolic 
age, than attended the labors of Chrysostom and Au- 
gustine, than followed the preaching of the Wesleys, 
Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards. How often we 
have seen God take men out of the depths of igno- 
rance and want, and with them mightily increase 
His kingdom, thus shaming our lack of faith in the 
agencies for good which are already ours! If you 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 481 

think Christ must needs come in some new form of 
power, in order that the nations may be given to 
Him, what do you do with the story of the Sandwich 
Islands or of the island of Madagascar ? Could the 
recent history of Madagascar be any more wonderful 
if Christ were visibly with us ? At the beginning of 
this century it was peopled by a nation of idolaters, 
skilled in many of the arts and ways of civilized life, 
but who were so sunk in the vices and crimes of their 
heathenism that they might have sat for St. Paul's 
picture in the First of Romans. But to-day, through 
God's blessing on the work of the English missiona- 
ries, they are a Christian nation, with churches, 
schools, a native ministry, wise laws, social and do- 
mestic order, libraries, newspapers ; their queen and 
many of her chief officers devoted servants of Christ. 
Who art thou that darest to say, " Are there not yet 
four months, and then cometh the harvest ? " Can 
you imagine any transformation in the future which 
shall be more wonderful than this? Go to that is- 
land, and tell its people that Christ is coming back to 
our world some day to subdue men under Him, and 
they would not understand you. They would look on 
you with astonishment. Tell them that the gospel as 
now revealed is to save only a handful of our race, 
and they would not take you for a Christian, but for 
a Hebrew of the Hebrews. They would say that the 
millennial glory is already theirs, and that they are so 
blessed in this as not to be able to think of one yet to 
come. The utmost they can pray for is that the light 
which has visited them may spread over the world. 

Not only do we need simply the power which we 
already have, but where has any more been promised 
us ? Was it not all given, and pointed to as our war* 



482 SERMONS. 

rant for attempting the conquest of the world, in the 
hour when Christ ascended to the Father ? O ye who 
doubt the present, and who peer anxiously into the 
future for some new revelation of Christ's power, go 
out with your risen Lord from Jerusalem to the 
Mount of Olives. What does He say as He is about 
to be parted from you ? Does He say that you must 
wait for His final coming, and only then see His 
kingdom begin to prevail ? No, dear friends. He 
looks for no new sources of strength to Him and His 
church in the future. But He says — oh, listen to 
what He says ! listen ! — " All power is given unto 
me in heaven and in earth ! " Therefore what ? 
Stand gazing up into heaven? whisper among the 
faint-hearted that we cannot go over and possess the 
land ? preach that our largest success must needs be 
but partial till this same Jesus is again visibly with 
us ? No, dear friends ; not this, nor anything like it, 
but something very different from it ! "All power 
is given unto me in heaven and in earth, therefore GO 
— and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever 
I have commanded you ; and lo, I AM with you alway, 
even unto the end of the world." 



ADDRESSES. 



SAMUEL ADAMS. 

In the long night of national perplexity, when our 
way is doubtful and those chosen to lead us give con- 
flicting counsels, it may cheer us to look up, for a 
little, to the stars of our political heavens, — to those 
still but ever faithful monitors whom no ambitions, or 
party quarrels, or maddening greed of office, can per- 
suade to mislead and betray us. The revolving cen- 
tury is lifting many of those stars into the horizon ; 
bright names of the Revolutionary period, which gave 
birth to those ideas and principles that are still the 
hope and the guide of the republic. Central and fore- 
most, and in certain respects forever greatest, in that 
benign constellation, shines the name of Samuel 
Adams. It is not necessary now to account for that 
obscurity which has rested on his more private and 
personal history, except to say that it was, in part, a 
result of political animosities which embittered his old 
age ; a result too, in part, of his having outlived those 
who knew him well in the days of the Revolutionary 
struggle ; as also, in part, of his devotion to the public 
good, which was so constant and absorbing as to allow 
no time or thought for recording personal memoirs. 
His career illustrates the saying that vast and mighty 
forces are concealed. The power of gravitation is not 



484 ADDRESSES. 

conspicuous, yet every atom of matter in the universe 
does its bidding. There were occasions, as we shall 
see, when he came out of his pavilion and assumed a 
leadership to which no other courage was equal, mak- 
ing himself the conspicuous mark at which the bolts of 
British tyranny were especially levelled ; yet, so long 
as the good cause went forward, he preferred to toil out 
of sight, leaving it for the less devoted to draw the gaze 
and the applause of the public. Only the more pene- 
trating minds, such as Thomas Jefferson and those who 
have carefully studied the annals of that time, have dis- 
covered how emphatically he was the master spirit in 
the cause of independence. He is known in history as 
the " Father of the Revolution," — a title which by com- 
mon consent had even in his lifetime been accorded 
him. Nor does any other title so fully, and yet without 
flattery, indicate the great and initial work by which he 
laid, almost with his own hands alone, the foundations 
of our free nationality. Unlike Washington in mili- 
tary glory and the proprietorship of vast estates, unlike 
Lincoln in the crown of martyrdom and those homely 
charms which fit one to become a popular idol, unlike 
them both in the renown and opportunities of high 
office, he was every whit their peer in devotion to the 
rights of man, their superior in the Puritanic integrity 
of his character ; and he fixed for them both, and for 
all his successors, the corner-stone of American lib- 
erties, from which the whole building has been grow- 
ing up toward a perfect temple, only to realize in its 
latest completeness the ideal which inspired him. 

As the great founder of the Hebrew state was called 
to his work while he yet ministered as a child before 
Eli, so this American Samuel seemed to receive his 
consecration almost in infancy. Destined to find his 



SAMUEL ADAMS. 485 

Amalekite in the British king, his Saul in John Han- 
cock, and his David only in Washington, his early 
training was in a school that furnished him well for 
the bold and delicate office. The father of our little 
Samuel, besides being deacon in the church and cap- 
tain of militia, was a leader in the politics of Bos- 
ton. At his house a few of the citizens met regularly 
to discuss the interests of the colonies and their rela- 
tions to the mother country, — known, from the connec- 
tion of most of them with the shipbuilding interest, as 
the " Caulkers' Club," whence the more familiar word 
" caucus." Deacon Adams, like the true Puritan that 
he was, supposed, as a matter of course, that his prom- 
ising son would be a minister. But while his hopes 
and frequent hints to the son looked this way, the 
influence of the Caulkers' Club was doing its silent 
work ; and it seemed to the boy, in the pauses of the 
earnest discussions, that something whispered within 
him, " Thou art called unto liberty." This faint ad- 
monition grew clearer as he neared the age of man- 
hood ; and when, upon the day of his graduation at 
Harvard College, in an essay on the query " Whether 
it be lawful to resist the supreme magistrate if the 
commonwealth cannot be otherwise preserved," he 
took the affirmative of the question, and boldly main- 
tained the right of the subject to defend himself 
against the encroachments of the monarch, the spirit 
of Freedom seemed to descend upon him, and set him 
apart from all other callings, to be her own especial 
champion. 

The father no longer insisted on his plan for the 
ministry, yielding to what he regarded as the mani- 
fest will of Heaven ; yielding the more readily, per- 
haps, for the reason that British legislation, interfering 



486 ADDRESSES. 

with the rights of the colonists, had already reduced 
him to the verge of poverty. He was willing that 
Samuel should be a law unto himself, and enter the 
dread arena against the power by which father and 
son both had been so bitterly injured. No one watched 
with more tender interest the opening career of the 
youthful champion than his elder sister Mary. Her 
sympathy and counsels seem to have been to him a 
daily inspiration, drawing from him in later years 
the noble remark : " That is a happy young man who 
has had an elder sister upon whom he could rely for 
advice and counsel in youth." 

He had no love of money. It was not to rebuild 
his broken fortunes, but from an innate love of jus- 
tice, that he ventured upon the unequal contest. Busi- 
ness, with which he dallied for a time, languished upon 
his hands. Far other was the work he had been sent 
to do. We cannot say how early in life he formed 
the distinct purpose of laboring for American inde- 
pendence, but there is no recorded act of his within 
the sphere of politics, even from the beginning, which 
did not tend directly to this result. His whole life, 
from 1748, when he was twenty-six years old, to the 
time of the first peace with England, — nearly a third 
of a century, — was a single campaign. And never 
did Napoleon, or Wellington, or Grant plan a cam- 
paign more thoroughly, or " fight it out " more un- 
swervingly. 

One of his first steps was the organization of a 
political club, and the issue of a weekly paper called 
the " Political Advertiser." In that paper he pub- 
lished a series of essays on liberty, and on the rela- 
tions of England to America, remarkable for their 
bold speculation, profound insight, mature thought, 



SAMUEL ADAMS. 487 

and classic purity of style, anticipating almost the 
whole ground of debate in the Revolutionary struggle. 
The subjects of these essays were carefully discussed 
in the club before giving them to the public. Thus 
the little circle of patriots were drawn more closely 
together, came to be of one heart and mind, and were 
fired with a common enthusiasm ; and the oj)inions 
which went forth from them had a sober and well- 
considered look which gave them great weight with 
the thoughtful reader. It came to be a matter of no 
small honor, among the more aspiring young men, to 
be a member of this club ; and Adams watched it as 
the very centre of all his hopes, excluding from it any 
who leaned to the royal side, but gladly admitting 
such as he could count on in the battle for colonial 
rights. It was the furnace, kept blazing night and 
day, at which the weapons of liberty were forged, and 
to which the patriots of the time came to light their 
torches. There was one feature of this club which, 
I think, will commend it to all good wives and sisters 
and mothers. It seems to have met for the most part 
in Mr. Adams's own house. It was domesticated in 
his family, mingling its earnest discussions with the 
prattle of childhood and the gentle words of woman, 
around his ample hearthstone. Hospitality, love of 
home, and reverence for true womanhood were thus 
sacredly intertwined with his devotion to freedom. 
His first wife was the daughter of his minister [at the 
New South Church] ; and we may judge how tender 
was the charm she had woven round his life, by what 
he wrote in the family Bible the day she died : "To 
her husband she was as sincere a friend as she was a 
faithful wife. Her exact economy^ in all her relative 
capacities, her kindred on his side as well as her own 



488 ADDRESSES. 

admire. Siie ran her Christian race with remarkable 
steadiness, and finished in triumph. She left two 
small children. God grant they may inherit her 
graces ! " 

The light of the home thus early quenched was re- 
lighted after an interval of seven years, Elizabeth 
Wells succeeding to the place of Elizabeth Checkley. 
She proved a worthy successor ; and from that time 
forward to the day of his death, patriotism and domes- 
tic love blended their fervent rays in his simple house- 
hold. Mr. Bancroft says : " He was a tender husband, 
an affectionate parent, and relaxing from severer cares 
he could vividly enjoy the delights of conversation 
with friends; but the walls of his modest mansion 
never witnessed dissipation, or levity, or frivolous 
amusements, or anything inconsistent mth the dis- 
cipline of the man whose incessant prayer was that 
' Boston might become a Christian Sparta.' He was 
poor, and so contented with poverty that men censured 
him as ' wanting wisdom to estimate riches at their 
just value.' But he was frugal and temperate ; and 
his wife, endowed with the best qualities of a New 
England woman, knew how to work with her own 
hands, so that the small resources, which men of the 
least opulent class would have deemed a very imper- 
fect support, were sufficient for his simple wants. 
Yet such was the union of dignity with economy that 
whoever visited him saw around him every circum- 
stance of propriety. Above all, he combined with 
poverty a stern and incorruptible integrity." Such 
was the home in which the child of independence was 
born and cradled. It is no extravagance, but simple 
truth only, to say of that " modest mansion," that it 
was the headquarters of the party of liberty for nearly 



SAMUEL ADAMS. 489 

a generation. Thither came Otis, Warren, Hancock, 
and a host of others continually, to catch its inspira- 
tion ; and from it went forth those calm but electric 
words which fired the hearts of the people, and mar- 
shalled them to the dread encounter. Toward that 
plain dwelling the eyes of the poor and lowly were 
ever turned as the citadel of their strength. " Samuel 
Adams during all his life was their tribune." They 
saw his withering indignation falling perpetually on 
the haughty few who "despise their neighbor's hap- 
piness because he wears a worsted cap or leathern 
apron." " Most of his public papers," says one of his 
biographers, " were written in a study or library ad- 
joining his bedroom ; and his wife, after his death, 
related how in the stillness of the night she used to 
listen to the incessant motion of the pen in the next 
room, whence the solitary lamp, which lighted the 
patriot in his labors, was visible. One who knew him 
personally, and whose business obliged him for a long 
time to pass after midnight by the house, says that he 
seldom failed to see the study lighted, no matter how 
far the night was gone ; ' and he knew that Sam 
Adams was hard at work writing against the Tories.' " ^ 
Well did that solitary lamp typify the mission of 
Adams, whose soul was bright with hope for his coun- 
try in her darkest hours, who toiled sleeplessly on 
while others sank exhausted amid thickening dangers, 
whose steady enthusiasm was a star that ever cheered 
the benighted patriot. 

His plan, at which he thus toiled from youth to old 

age, and which opened out more and more till it 

became commensurate with the history of his times, 

may be sketched in few words : first, the education of 

1 Wells's Life, vol. i. p. 202. 



490 ADDRESSES. 

the people into a profound knowledge and vivid con- 
sciousness of their rights as freemen ; second, a fear- 
less exposure, to his countrymen and the world, of the 
encroachments of Britain upon those rights ; third, 
the arousing of the masses to that lofty patriotism 
which should prevent their being bribed into compli- 
ance with the royal pleasure ; fourth, the union of all 
the colonies in one grand struggle for independence. 
We stand fixed with admiring wonder in view of the 
undertaking thus briefly outlined. Could anything 
short of a Divine inspiration have nerved that one 
obscure man to attempt so mighty a deliverance of 
his people ? Was it not a rare instance of the moral 
sublime when he thus entered the lists against all the 
ideas of the Old World, and challenged the most im- 
perial power on earth to a hand-to-hand encounter in 
championship of human rights? We think of the 
lofty determination of the printer-boy of Newbury- 
port, who more than thirty years ago vowed eternal 
hostility to the slave-power in the South ; of the pur- 
pose of Columbus, that child amid the warehouses of 
Genoa, to discover a new world ; of the lonely monk 
of Wittenberg, lifting his battle-axe against papal 
supremacy : for it is only such undertakings as those 
that can parallel the stupendous plan of Adams. If 
we were to seek a parallel in sacred history, it would 
be the shepherd of Midian, coming down out of Horeb 
from the bush that burned, to deliver his sufferins^ 
countrymen from Egyptian bondage, and lead them 
through the dread wilderness that stretched from the 
Red Sea to the river Jordan. It was in the rayless 
midnight that the immortal hero lighted his solitary 
lamp ; nor did the steady beam of that lamp for a 
moment grow dim tiU the Aurora of Independence had 



SAMUEL ADAMS. 491 

purpled the eastern sky. That faithful pen moved 
incessantly on in the little chamber, mingling its rus- 
tle with the whispered prayers of the waking wife, till 
its sentences bristled into bayonets and swords, and 
the dream of the patriot became the heritage of the 
world. 

A benign Providence seemed to be with Adams 
from first to last, favoring his vast design. The pro- 
ducts of his prolific pen, meant to educate his country- 
men to a clear knowledge and jealous guardianship 
of their rights, were sown broadcast during the mild 
administrations of Shirley and Pownall. They were 
of just the nature to waken a responsive chord in the 
popular heart, and radical enough to provoke earnest 
replies from royalists both at home and in Europe, 
but they excited no immediate alarm. There was 
hardly a ripple as yet on the surface of affairs to her- 
ald the gathering tempest ; the revolution destined to 
burst over a continent had not scented the breeze. 
Natural rights, chartered rights, and the constitutional 
rights of British subjects were thoroughly discussed 
in all their relations and bearings, and the good seed 
had taken deep root in a congenial soil before the 
winter of despotic rule came on. 

The change on the part of England from a mild to 
an aggressive policy could not intimidate but only ex- 
asperate a people thus prepared. What now most be- 
hooved the oreat liberator was to watch the course of 
the British ministry, and of Bernard, Hutchinson, and 
Gage, and drag forth their oppressive measures into 
the light of day. This he did with sleepless vigilance, 
and with a vividness of description that stirred almost 
to madness the sensitive minds of his countrymen. 
Did England propose that the colonists should pay 



492 ADDRESSES. 

the expenses of tlie Frencli war, in wliicli they had 
already so grievously suffered? That proposal was 
known in every hamlet of Massachusetts, where it 
met a proud defiance. The newspaper columns were 
the columns on which Adams relied, and by which he 
conquered. They flew everywhere, bristling with his 
sharp exposures of schemes to cripple the finances, the 
manufactures, the trade of the colonies, and to reduce 
them to a state of spiritless dependence on the mother 
country. Nothing could be more opportune, since he 
asked nothing better for his purpose, than unjust rev- 
enue laws, attempts to tax an unrepresented people, 
and to quarter soldiers in time of peace upon the un- 
offending inhabitants. These events were not valued 
in themselves so much as counters with which he 
played the grand game of American Independence. 
There were murmurs, and defiant threats, and effigy- 
burnings, and riots, and processions in the streets of 
Boston : and in them all Adams was seldom promi- 
nent or even visible : but the whole world knew that 
his finger was upon the springs of the popular indig- 
nation ; they heard the uproar, and saw the wrathful 
countenances of outraged freemen, and then turned 
wonderingly to that little chamber and its lonely lamp 
where the patient toiler was bent to his midnight 
task. 

But it was in awakening a martyr spirit among the 
people that Adams showed his consummate power. 
They had risen up in wrath against their oppressors : 
could they be taught to suffer the loss of all things, 
rather than ^-deld their liberties ? Here his own 
example was the charm which drew and transfigured 
others. They knew that he had made himself poor by 
his devotion to freedom. They knew that once, when 



SAMUEL ADAMS. 493 

a negro slave was presented him, he had said, " A 
slave cannot live in my house. If she comes, she 
must be free." They knew of the price set on his 
life, and of the secret plots to carry him to England 
to be tried for treason. They knew that he alone, 
with Hancock whom he influenced, was excepted in 
the royal pardon on condition of future submission. 
They knew also that gold had been offered him in his 
poverty, and the honors of office, and even a patent of 
nobility, in the hope of drawing him from his high 
purpose ; and that to the bearer of these overtures he 
had replied with flaming scorn : " Sir, I trust I have 
long since made my peace with the King of kings. 
No personal consideration shall induce me to abandon 
the righteous cause of my country. Tell Governor 
Gage it is the advice of Samuel Adams to him no 
longer to insult the feelings of an exasperated peo- 
ple." Such a spirit in such a man could not but be 
contagious. It went forth, a beam of enchanted light, 
from the sacred chamber, touching the souls of the 
masses, and transfusing them with a heroic readiness 
to suffer ; so that they could look without a murmur 
on their ships rotting at the wharves, could deny 
themselves the luxury of tea and the use of foreign 
fabrics, could contemplate with an air of triumph 
their ruined finances, could abstain from lamb's flesh 
to make themselves independent of the European 
wool-grower. 

We can hardly appreciate, in this day of easy com- 
munication, the herculean task which Adams under- 
took, of uniting all the colonies in the struggle for in- 
dependence. But without the telegraph, the railroad, 
or the steam-vessel, undaunted by the isolated condi- 
tion of the settlements, and the vast wilds stretching 



4Si4 ADDRESSES, 

between them, he set himself cheerfully to the work 
of bringing them into a single community. His suc- 
cess alone proved that the work was not impossible. 
How he overcame these obstacles is more than we can 
now explain. But somehow, by some invisible chord, 
he bound the hearts of Dickinson, Franklin, Jeffer- 
son, Gadsden, and of a host of other leaders like 
them, to his own ; and through their writing and 
speeches, tremulous with the life that throbbed in 
him, the continent at length vibrated in unison to his 
master-touch. 

Let no one suspect, because Adams chose to labor 
for the most part with his pen in retirement, that he 
lacked the courage or the ability to assume an open 
leadership when the exigencies of the cause required. 
He was willing to toil unobserved, and let others stand 
conspicuous in the public eye ; but if they quailed at 
any time before the onset of some unusual danger, he 
was straightway found in the forefront of the con- 
flict, moving like a tower of adamant into the very 
face of the enemy, as Sheridan, by rushing forward 
at the battle of Cedar Creek, stopped the flight of 
his panting legions and turned defeat into victory. 
There were at least three occasions on which Adams 
thus sprang to the rescue of his imperilled cause, 
snatching it from the very clutch of the royal hand, 
while his fellow-patriots were ready to give up all for 
lost, — once after the massacre of March the fifth. 
The determination of the king to press through his 
unjust measures by military power had borne its first 
bloody fruits. Eleven citizens, three of them slain 
outright, and but one of them having attempted any 
disturbance, had been struck by the murderous bullets 
of the troops [in King Street]. A terrible crisis had 



SAMUEL ADAMS. 495 

come. Either the cause of independence must be 
abandoned, and America yielded up to the royal dic- 
tation, or this outrage must be avenged and its repeti- 
tion be rendered impossible. But to defy the colossal 
power of England, — this was the step at which the 
people of Boston now stood aghast. It is three 
o'clock, the evening of the day after the massacre 
[March 6]. The citizens of the town are crowded 
into the Old South Church and along the street be- 
tween the church and the King's Council Chamber. 
A committee, which has been to Lieutenant-Governor 
Hutchinson (who acted for the king) to represent the 
feelings of the inhabitants, is on its way to the church, 
" led by Samuel Adams, his head bared in reverence 
to the occasion, and his gray locks flowing in the 
wind." He reports to the eager multitude Hutchin- 
son's evasive words ; and they, now fired by his own 
invincible ardor, appoint him to return and tell the 
king's functionary that the two regiments must leave 
town at once. He stands again in the presence of the 
Royal Council. The representatives of the civil and 
military power of England are before him. Around 
him, dimly seen in the growing dusk of twilight, hang 
the portraits of British sovereigns and the insignia 
of empire. He calmly announces the people's ultima- 
tum. Hutchinson, anxious to make his humiliation 
and that of his king as slight as possible, says that 
one regiment may go, and he will write to Governor 
Gage respecting the removal of the other. Then it 
was that the spirit of Samuel Adams rose up in ma- 
jesty. " Drawing himself to his full height, determi- 
nation flashing from his clear blue eye, he stretched 
forth his arm, ' which slightly shook with the energy 
of his soul,' and, gazing steadfastly upon the lieuten- 



496 ADDRESSES. 

ant-governor, replied : ' If you have the power to re- 
move one regiment, you have power to remove both. 
It is at your peril if you refuse. The meeting is com- 
posed of three thousand people. They are become 
impatient. A thousand men are already arrived from 
the neighborhood, and the whole country is in motion. 
Night is approaching. An immediate answer is de- 
manded. Both regiments or none.' " ^ The king's 
council were smitten down and overawed by this ter- 
rible storm. In one moment the pride of Britain had 
gone crouching and cowering at the feet of the im- 
mortal patriot. The shadow receded not a whit, but 
only went forward with a mighty stride on the dial- 
plate of revolution. And the two regiments slunk 
away to a fort in Boston harbor, obeying the order of 
Adams so precipitately that Lord North ever after 
spoke of them as " Sam Adams's Regiments." 

This, however, was but the beginning of victories 
won by the personal valor of Adams. Yielding for 
once the assumed right to enforce her will at the point 
of the bayonet, England was still determined to collect 
a revenue from the colonies. Would they stand to 
their non-importation agreements, and refuse at all 
hazards to receive her duty-paying merchandise ? was 
now the question. This sharp issue was forced upon 
them by dispatching a quantity of tea to Boston, con- 
signed to a Mr. Botch. Adams, who was determined 
that the tea should not be landed, feared that the pop- 
ular resolution might give way ; and again he put him- 
self in the van of the battle. The obnoxious article 
is in the harbor ; and out of kindness to Mr. Botch 
he is told that he may save it by sending it back to 
England. This he is willing to do ; and the assem- 

V Well's Life of Adams, vol. I p. 323. 



SAMUEL ADAMS. 497 

bled people wait quietly at Old South while he goes 
to Hutchinson for permission. Adams, knowing that 
the government would not yield but was resolved to 
test the mettle of Boston, had quietly made ready for 
the exigency. Let me give the rest in the words of 
Thomas Carlyle : " At three no Rotch, nor at four, 
nor at five ; miscellaneous, plangent, intermittent 
speech instead, in tone sorrowful rather than indig- 
nant ; at a quarter to six, here at length is Rotch : 
sun is long set, — has Rotch a clearance or not ? 
Rotch reports at large, willing to be questioned and 
cross - questioned : ' Governor absolutely would not ! 
My Christian friends, what could I or can I do ? ' 
There are by this time 7,000 people in [and about] 
Old South Meeting-house, very few tallow lights in 
comparison. Rotch's report done, the chairman (one 
Adams, ' American Cato ') dissolves the sorrowful 
7,000 with these words : ' This meeting declares that 
it can do nothing more to save the coimtry.' Hark, 
however: almost on the instant, in front of the Old 
South Meeting - house, ' a terrific war - whoop, and 
about fifty Mohawk Indians,' — with whom Adams 
seems to be acquainted. Forward, without noise, to 
Griffin's Wharf ; sentries all around there ; a great 
silence in the neighborhood ; three gangs busy, on the 
dormant tea-ships, opening their chests and punctu- 
ally shaking them out into the sea. About ten p. M. 
all was finished ; three hundred and forty-two chests 
of tea flung out to infuse in the Atlantic ; the fifty 
Mohawks gone like a dream ; and Boston sleeping 
more silently even than usual." It is easy to see, 
through these, the quaint sentences of the old hero- 
worshiper, his vast admiration for Samuel Adams. 
Here certainly was a marvelous instance of strategy 



498 ADDRESSES. 

and personal power. One poor gentleman, by leaving 
liis study and thus stepping to the front, outwits the 
king and the ministers, and breathes into every soul 
of his fellow-patriots an unconquerable zeal for lib- 
erty. Soldiers have left the field, tax-gatherers are 
routed ; what next ? 

The last point in Adams's programme of indepen- 
dence is a Continental Congress. And it was in 
achieving this, if I mistake not, that his great abilities 
had their finest illustration. For this the popular 
mind, under his influence, had long been ripening. By 
prodigious efforts, — corresponding with leading men 
in the various colonies, persuading them to appoint 
committees of correspondence, and issuing circular 
letters from the Boston Committee, — he had, after 
long years of weary toil, made this concert of action 
practicable. Some of the other colonies, inspired by 
him, had already chosen delegates for a Continental 
Congress, — a step which Massachusetts found great 
difficulty in taking, owing to the close watch kept upon 
her by the royal agents. She was the natural leader, 
and without her the Congress would prove a failure ; 
but she was chained and guarded. Her General 
Court could not meet except as called together by 
Gage ; and if the representatives sought to contravene 
his will, he by his mere dictum could at any moment 
dissolve the court. This he had once done, just as 
Adams was introducing a resolution to appoint dele- 
gates. But Gage was not long in learning that he 
was no match for the man he sought to put down in 
this cowardly manner. The court is assembled at 
Salem. Gage has a spy in the room to report any 
obnoxious doings. The crisis has come. Adams has 
conversed with the members privately, and is sure of 



SAMUEL ADAMS. 499 

his majority. By some quiet management, the door 
of the room is locked and the key in Adams's pocket. 
The motion to appoint the delegates is now made. 
There is one wild storm of excitement. A Tory mem- 
ber feigns sickness, and, being let out, runs to tell 
Gage. But no one is admitted. The governor writes 
his order, and hurries off his messenger with it, to dis- 
solve the court. He finds a throng of excited people 
about the building, but calls in vain for the door to 
open. Samuel Adams has turned a key upon the 
whole majesty of England ! He is carrying the des- 
tinies of a nascent republic in his single pocket. And 
those destinies were safe, as what interest of human 
liberty was not always safe in his keeping? Incom- 
parable patriot ! Called by thine enemies Sam the 
Maltster, Samuel the Publican, the Chief Incendiary, 
the Psalm-singer, veril}^ thou wast in that exigency, 
as wise men are glad to own, the Father of America, 
" the first politician in the world," the last of the 
Puritans' political parent, the Palinurus of the Revo- 
lution. The opening of that door was to England 
as the opening of the Apocalyptic seals. Out of it 
moved the Continental Congress, the Declaration of 
Independence, the War of the Revolution, American 
citizenship, and the humiliation of Great Britain ! 

The public life of Adams may be said to have now 
cidminated. No other man of that day was an object 
of such romantic interest, both to his countrymen and 
the world. Not that he was the idol of the people ; 
that is too tame a word. He was their revered Father, 
to whom they looked w^ith the trustfulness of dear 
children, as the conqueror of England and the deliv- 
erer of America. Being- about to start for Pliiladel- 
phia with the Massachusetts delegation, he- finds at his 



500 ADDEESSES. 

front door a large trunk with his name on it, contain- 
ing a suit of clothes, two pairs of shoes, a set of silver 
shoe-buckles and of gold knee-buckles, sleeve-buttons 
bearing the device of a liberty-cap, an elegant cocked 
hat, a gold-headed cane, a red cloak ; in short, a com- 
plete outfit of wearing apparel for a gentleman of that 
time. And this was but one of the almost numberless 
attentions which, with equal delicacy, were showered 
upon the great man who had made himself poor that 
he might enrich his country and his race. That was 
a memorable day when Adams with his three asso- 
ciates set out from Watertown in the special coach 
provided for them. Strange hopes and fears were in 
all hearts, and manly tears stood in many an eye, as 
they grasped the hands of Warren, Hancock, the two 
Coopers, Paul Revere, and Josiah Quincy, — the last 
an especial favorite of Adams, so young, so frail, the 
hectic flush already burning on his cheek. Ovations 
await them all along the road. They are welcomed 
into cities and towns, and feasted, and escorted on 
their way. Samuel Adams is the especial hero, — he 
of the midnight lamp and the waking wife, who had 
never been fifty miles from Boston before, — and when 
the coach rolls into Philadelphia, the desire to see 
him is intense. But he has no vanity, no vulgar am- 
bition, to be inflamed by the plaudits of the throng. 
He takes his seat among the delegates, — the same 
quiet, patient, far-sighted, toilful man as when he sat 
in the little library at home. The precedence nat- 
urally due to him, he yields to others. If the more 
southern colonies will come into the plan for inde- 
pendence, they may have the honors ; all he asks, for 
himself and Massachusetts, is that they be allowed a 
full share of the work and sacrifice. The session is 



SAMUEL ADAMS. 501 

to be opened with prayer. Who shall officiate? 
Adams persuades his friends to yield their scruples, 
smothers his own hereditary dislike of the English 
Church, and pleases Virginia and South Carolina by 
getting the service assigned to a friend of theirs, 
Mr. Duche. As the Revolution goes forward, it be- 
comes necessary to choose a commander-in-chief of the 
Continental armies. Again the unselfish wisdom of 
Adams comes out. He sets aside his friend and pro- 
teg^ Hancock, who is eager for the office, and secures 
the election of Washington. Few persons have under- 
stood, however, what the old patriot lost by this step. 
It cost him the friendship of John Hancock and the 
favor of Massachusetts, where Hancock, owing to his 
vast wealth, had great influence. The noble old man 
found that even Boston could not follow him in his 
career of unselfishness. She valued her claims to 
distinction ; could not imitate him by giving the pre- 
cedence to other colonies ; felt that he was false to her 
by keeping her in the background. Hancock never 
forgave him. He ceased to be the popular favorite in 
his own colony. Is there anything in personal bi- 
ography more sublime ? Behold him, — turning life- 
long friends into enemies, blasting all his political 
prospects, going under a cloud from which he was 
never to emerge in his lifetime ; and all that he might 
make the union of the colonies a certainty, that their 
armies might be under a wise and safe leader, that 
they might be sure of independence and nationality, 
and that the country might forever rejoice in tlie illus- 
trious name of Washington I It was a beautiful coin- 
cidence in after-years, while Washington was visiting 
at Cambridge, and Hancock (then governor) refused 
to wait on him, that Adams was sent to welcome to 



502 ADDRESSES, 

• 

the hospitalities of the commonwealth the man for 
whom he had, literally almost, " suffered the loss of 
all things." Whether '' the Father of his Country " 
ever fitly recognized his indebtedness to Adams or not, 
is uncertain. But no envious word, no murmur, no 
sigh as of a wounded spirit, was ever heard from the 
lips of the devoted patriot. His face wore its wonted 
look of patient cheerfulness. Where was the smallest 
pay and the greatest toil in the public service, there 
he was willing to be ; nor did he seem to have any 
wish for himself but to be worn out and offered up in 
the sacred cause of liberty. I ought to add here, in 
justice to the greatest name, perhaps, in the annals of 
the church to which I minister, that Samuel Adams 
was an earnest and consistent Christian, an old-fash- 
ioned, orthodox Puritan Christian, all his life. One 
of the last letters he ever wrote was addressed to 
Thomas Paine, and remonstrated with that scoffer 
against the publishing of his infidel books. Adams 
had no faith in a freedom which is divorced from 
Christianity. On the contrary, he felt that freedom 
without religion is but a mockery. His home was a 
Bethel. In it there was family worship — no matter 
who might be present, or how great the stress of busi- 
ness — as often as the morning and evening came. 
And no meal was ever eaten without the reverent 
blessing before it. The Sabbath found him in his 
place at church with his family, — always, when he 
could, taking part in the singing, in which exercise 
he seemed at times to be helped by a special inspira- 
tion. The Christian character of such a man reveals 
the utter puerility of the taunt which we sometimes 
see cast at pious statesmanship. It reveals the pro- 
found source of Adams's patriotism. It teaches the 



SAMUEL ADAMS. 60 



Q 



legislator o£ to-day, that he never rises to his true 
dignity, and wields all the influence he is capable of, 
till he rises into communion with God. Such patriot- 
ism could not have its reward amid the strifes of mor- 
tal men. Only in the serene and immortal life, which 
begins when the blessed wave of death has closed 
over all, could the transcendent virtues of Adams put 
forth their bloom. He is no exception to the ever- 
lasting truth of the great words, " He that humbleth 
himself shall be exalted, and whoso loseth his life 
shall find it." It was sown in weakness ; it is rising 
in power. It was sown without honor from men ; it is 
rising to eternal and universal renown. There was 
beseeming beauty in the lines applied to him at his 
death : — 

" Ne'er to those chambers where the inig-hty rest, 
Since their foundation, came a nobler guest ; 
Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss conveyed 
A fairer spirit, or more welcome shade." 

And future generations will see more and more of 
the depths of simple truth in the lines beneath a pic- 
ture of him made while he was in the zenith of his 
career : — 

*' When haughty lords, impressed with proud disdain, 
Spurned at the virtue which rejects their chain ; 
Heard with a tyrant scorn our rights implored ; 
And when we sued for justice sent the sword, — 
Lo ! Adams rose, in warfare nobly tried ; 
His country's saviour, father, shield, and guide : 
Urged by her wrongs, he waged the glorious strife, 
Nor paused to waste a coward thought on life." 

There are lessons in the career of Samuel Adams 
which ought not to be lost on our public men of this 
generation : — 

1. They should learn from him that the adequate 
policy is the only one to succeed. There were, in his 
day, men who believed in half-way measures as a 



504 ADDRESSES. 

remedy for colonial wrongs, and who advocated such 
measures till the march of events left them among 
the enemies of their country. But Adams, foresee- 
ing independence to be the only basis of a lasting 
settlement, dared, against the remonstrances of timid 
friends, to toil for it till the result proved his far-see- 
ing wisdom. So, in our day, there are men who plead 
for temporary expedients, hoping thereby to pacify 
a distracted Union. It is strange that they should 
so fail in their diagnosis, or that they should expect 
superficial remedies to cure so inveterate a disease. 
As history has proved Adams's treatment to have been 
wisest for what was then suffered, so it will yet be 
proved that the men laboring for equality of rights 
throughout this Union, and insisting on them as pre- 
liminary to a final settlement of our troubles, are our 
wisest and safest leaders. The through policy is best. 
We shall learn, as one compromise after another fails, 
that no other policy is adequate. Let us hope that 
the patient has vitality enough to hold out, through all 
the foolish experimenting now going on, till that sov- 
ereign remedy is applied. 

2. The career of Adams should teach our public 
men to heed carefully the signs of the times. Those 
signs are the striking events, occurring in a nation's 
onward march, indicating the state of public senti- 
ment, — the pulse-beats of the popular heart. Adams 
never blundered here. He rode on the crest of the 
wave, and never sought with yesterday's policy to 
control the spirit of to-day. When he saw the ap- 
plause which everywhere greeted Otis's speech against 
Writs of Assistance, he knew it was idle any longer 
to expect reconciliation with England. When the 
Stamp Act was repealed at the demand of the colo- 



SAMUEL ADAMS. 505 

nists, he saw that it had become safe to resist the Brit- 
ish ministry. After the massacre in King Street, he 
dared to rely on the courage of his countrymen. And 
when Captain Parker's men were shot down at Lex- 
ington, understanding that it meant independence and 
union, he exclaimed, " What a glorious morning is 
this ! " He so valued events of this kind, that he urged 
the keeping of their anniversaries, thereby lifting the 
free sentiment of the country constantly to a higher 
level. Now, had he pursued his object still as though 
nothing had happened, after these mighty changes of 
public sentiment, he would have fallen under foot and 
been trampled down by an advancing people. This 
nation has a new heart to-day, throbbing with the 
spirit of impartial liberty ; and only those who, like 
" the first politician in the world," discern the popular 
pulse, and govern themselves accordingly, may hope 
to escape our scorn, and to share in the victory which 
awaits us. 

3. The story of Adams should teach the young men 
of America that there is a patriotism more to be de- 
sired than all preferments or honors of office. Adams 
could have lived in affluence, and amid the splendors 
of the English court, had he chosen to go over to the 
side of royalty. But if he had ambition, it was cru- 
cified. Love of country overcame the temptation of 
riches, and made poverty welcome. What ignominy 
would have settled on his name had he been more 
ambitious and less patriotic ! His reward, though late 
in coming, is vast and glorious. He has robbed the 
grave of its oblivion, and lives on, — an example and 
inspiration to the American patriot. How short-lived 
the memory of those who are devoted to the fruits of 
party success ! Such ambition, if it deserves so gentle 



506 ADDRESSES. 

a name, is tlie loathsome ulcer of politics. Would 
you escape this corruption, and be had in honorable 
remembrance ? then ask simply that you may serve, 
and not that you may be rewarded. Remember him 
whose whole life was given to his country ; who stood 
fast in the place which demanded most and paid least ; 
who, without a murmur, saw leader after leader chosen 
over his own head — men whom he had trained and 
introduced to the public. Something better was in 
store for him. His grand Hfe, unstained by corrup- 
tion, unclouded by the insignia of office, was to shine 
as a star in the high firmament of patriotism. We 
know men whom political office has but gibbeted in 
everlasting infamy ; and we know other men who, 
without aspiring to political eminence, and spurning 
the base rewards of party, are laying up for them- 
selves a name which shall yet draw to it the reverent 
gaze of their country and the world. You must ex- 
pect in politics that, like " the Father of America," 
you will see new converts riding over tried men in 
political conventions. It has always been so, nor is 
there yet much sign of change. Therefore let patri- 
otism, and devotion to the right, be your inspiration. 
How much safer, and how vastly more glorious, to 
tread in the footsteps of Adams — devoted to princi- 
ple for the sake of principle — than to venture among 
the bogs and pitfalls of a vulgar ambition ! The prize 
of victory in the arena of politics is the same as every- 
where else. If you would win the greater prize, you 
must not be ambitious of the less. If you would go 
in for immortality, you must not go in for spoils. 
^ Words of surprise, and strong words of reproach, 

^ Written in 1866, before any statue was erected to Adams in the 
country. 



SAMUEL ADAMS. 607 

are uttered from time to time, because the country as 
yet contains, no monument to Samuel Adams. Not 
many persons — a few reverent pilgrims — know 
where his ashes repose. In this respect he recalls the 
mighty Hebrew lawgiver, of whom Bryant so grandly 
sings : — 

*' ^VTien he, who from the scourge of wrong 

Aroused the chosen tribes to fly, 
Saw the fair region promised long. 

And bowed him on the hills to die, 
God made his grave to men unknown, 

Where Moab's rocks a vale infold, 
And laid the aged seer alone 

To slumber while the world grows old." 

It is doubtful if any memorial, such as might destroy 
this resemblance to the ancient prophet, could add to 
the renown of our^pohtical parent." It would be 
impossible to present a symbol of his consummate 
virtues under any artistic form. Equestrian statues, 
memorial halls, and figures grouped in marble and 
bronze, may image to us a heroism less fundamental 
and more confined than his ; but what lines of beauty 
or of majesty shall enclose a life which made itself 
the principle and the animating soul of a great na- 
tion ? The only fit monument to such a life is that 
which the friends of freedom are unconsciously build- 
ing, — a vast temple of republicanism, its base the 
broad continent, and its dome the bending heavens ; 
equal laws inscribed all over its living walls, and its 
worship the multitudinous activities of a just and 
brave and Christian people. 



JOHN BROWN.i 

A FEW years ago, I came before you to speak for 
John Brown in the name of charity ; to-night I am 
here at your call to speak his triumph. Then it was 
not thought prudent to stand forth in his defense ; 
now no wise man wishes to be known as his enemy ; 
for what he then sowed in weakness has been raised 
in power, and his mortal has put on immortality. 

I can bring no fact concerning John Brown with 
which you are not already familiar ; I can utter no 
eulogy upon him which shall do justice to your pres- 
ent impressions. 

Our theme opens naturally in the following order : 
first, the work which he did ; secondly, how he was 
made ready for it; and thirdly, the manner of his 
doing it. 

I. The providential work of John Brown — that 
which makes his name historic and immortal — con- 
sisted in rallying the friends of liberty to open and 
immediate encounter with Slavery. He sounded the 
charge to final and victorious battle. It was his hand 
that took the free sentiment of the country as a 
thunderbolt and hurled it with crushing effect on the 
head of the Southern idol. To show you that I do not 
take this point without due cause, let us go back a 
little. 

On the one hand was Slavery, — from the very 
necessity of its nature a mortal foe to the republic. 

^ Lecture delivered in Miisie Hall, Boston, December 3, 1867. 



JOHN BROWN. 509 

For three generations that enemy had been growing 
strong and with consummate art intrenching its posi- 
tion. Weak at first, and admitted to be an evil, it 
was abhorred of all, — even those most nearly related 
to it. What first blunted this keen Southern con- 
science, and started a spirit of dalliance elsewhere, 
was the sudden importance of the cotton culture. 
The manufacturer was growing rich on this product, 
and was enriching the planter who furnished it. This 
mutual interest displaced conscience, and gave us on 
the one side compromise, on the other side the slave- 
power. It became the height of Southern ambition to 
own more negroes to raise more cotton to get more 
money to buy more negroes. Under the specious 
plea of State Rights, Slavery was declared unassaila- 
ble by the general government, even while stealthily 
plotting to bring that government under its control. 
The more it was let alone, the bolder it became. 
Finding its smaller demands met, it dared to bring 
greater, until at last it was installed in the highest 
seats of authority. The sanctions of law, the blan- 
dishments of wealth, and the charms of polite culture 
girded it about. We came to present the monstrous 
spectacle of a free nation ruled by a slave-holding oli- 
garchy. And never was despotism seemingly more 
thoroughly intrenched. The venomous reptile glared 
and brandished its forked tongue with perfect impu- 
nity. " Touch me not ! " was the legend written on its 
front, and the approach of any disturbing foot started 
its deadly rattle. 

On the other hand, side by side with this gradual 
ascent of slavery to supreme power, the sentiment of 
liberty had been rising and intensifying throughout 
the North. We had but few men who attempted to 



610 ADDRESSES. 

justify slavery on moral grounds. More generally, 
our people looked upon it as a Providential evil and 
mystery ; or, while condemning it, they refused to in- 
terfere with it, on grounds of expediency and consti- 
tutional obligation. The feeling of dislike was every- 
where, from out-speaking abolitionism down to those 
who amiably doubted and " waited for God's time." 
And these latter, lifted by the lever of events, were 
rising steadily, till at last our nation became a house 
divided against itself. Every success of slavery on the 
one side intensified the sentiment of freedom on the 
other. It sowed the wind only to reap the whirlwind, 
found each new device returning to plague the inven- 
tor. The wiping out of the Missouri line made thou- 
sands of Abolitionists. Torrey and Love joy, a hand- 
ful of corn in the earth, became as the cedars of 
Lebanon. There was more love of liberty after tbe 
annexation of slaveholding Texas than ever before. 
The army which marched from the Rio Grande to 
Mexico, under Taylor and Scott, made anti-slavery 
men here faster than it slew Mexicans there. The 
Fugitive Slave Law caused millions to spring to their 
feet, and swear that Slavery itself should be the fu- 
gitive and vagabond. And the Dred Scott decision, 
which was to give the kingdom to the conspiring oli- 
garchy, made the whole world cry out for vengeance. 

Thus stood the two hostile powers, — on that side 
the South, haughty and aggressive ; on this side the 
North, indignant but not seeing how to strike. The 
wolf which secretly preyed on our flocks lay deep in 
its lair ; and a Putnam was wanted to enter and drag 
the monster forth. The instincts of a free peojjle 
had gathered, like heaped-up waters, above the bold 
iniquity : who would go in and unlock the gates, that 



JOHN BROWN. 511 

they might riisli through and sweep it away ? Truth 
with Ithuriel spear had touched the enemy, and re- 
duced him to his proper ugliness ; but men looked in 
vain for any seed of woman that should bruise his 
head. A deep gulf lay between the criminal and the 
avenger, and none of us could tell how we might cross 
it. What we needed, what Liberty needed, what the 
world needed, was one who could bridge this chasm ; 
who had power to make his own life a path, over 
which we might advance till the foe should be in 
range of our weapons. The exigency called for a man 
brave enough and devoted enough to rush forward 
through compromise and legal enactment, gathering 
the hostile spears into his own bosom, till a path 
should be cleared for the soldiers of freedom. The 
disguise of law must be stripped off. The monster 
must be forced to show his true nature. Life must 
be nobly sacrificed, or our bolts would never smite 
down the hideous wickedness. 

Here was the work of John Brown. For this he 
was the Lord's chosen. God is not mocked. His 
quiver is full of arrows. He foresees His own ends, 
and makes ready His own instruments. Where is 
the altar and the wood, there also He provides the 
lamb for the sacrifice. In the grand crisis that had 
now come, the man of His right hand is a simple far- 
mer keeping his sheep in the wilderness. He takes 
this poor man out of the woods, and with him breaks 
the spell that is on Northern vengeance : counts him 
worthy to suffer ; teaches him, by His own secret 
inspirations, how to let loose the lightnings of an out- 
raged civilization. 

I know you will tell me it was Sumter that fired 
the Northern heart. But -Sumter was the reverberar 



512 ADDRESSES. 

tion of Harper's Ferry. The opening of the war of 
emancipation, hereafter in history, will date, not from 
Anderson's defense of a Southern fort, but from John 
Brown's martyrdom on a Southern scaffold. Do I re- 
member how you sprang to arms when the cannons' 
boom came rolling northward from Charleston har- 
bor ? Oh, yes ! who that saw the day can ever forget 
it ? But 1 remember, too, when you marched forth to 
overwhelm the uprising treason, it was not the Flag 
that you sung, nor the Union and Constitution, but 
the soul of Old John Brown. That was the music to 
which you kept step all your weary way to the front ; 
which thrilled you in the awful shock of battle ; which 
you poured out plaintively on the night air while the 
stars looked down on your dying comrades. Argue 
as we may, and say what we will, the final verdict of 
history will be, that John Brown on a Virginia gallows 
was the spark which lit the train, which fired the 
mine, which blew to atoms the institution of American 
Slavery ! 

( II. Such was the work — the awful work of self- 
devotion even unto death — for which humanity 
waited, while the souls under the altar were crying, 
" O Lord, how long ! " And this work is the standard 
by which to try the character of John Brown. It is 
unfair and impertinent to judge him by any other 
test. The question is not, Was he a gentleman in the 
conventional sense ; was he nicely observant of the 
rules of polite society ; was he graceful and refined 
after the similitude of a man of the world ? but, Was 
he adapted to his Providential work, — tlie sublimest 
work of the century ? Tried by this test, he can re- 
ceive but one verdict : God made him just what he 
needed to be to fulfill his God-appointed mission. 



JOHN BROWN. 513 

1. First, the ancestral spirit in him was marvel- 
ously suited to his mission. He came of a heroic 
stock, — a race of willing sufferers for truth, of whom 
the world was not worthy. He was the sixth in de- 
scent from Peter Brown, one of the immortal company 
of the Mayflower. His mother was the child of a 
Revolutionary officer, and his father's father died 
struggling for American independence. He was duly 
proud of this family record, and cherished in himself 
the spirit of his ancestors. That spirit was not only 
martial, but religious and conscientious. His fathers 
had ever stood on the side of truth and right. For 
this good cause the exile to Plymouth, the unstoried 
hardships in primeval wilds, the lajnng down of life 
in resistance to Britain. Such was the succession into 
which John Brown came. He felt the glow of this 
ancestral fire. He was resolved that his name should 
be worthy to be carved on the gravestone where he 
had put the names of his fathers. Perhaps he 
dreamed, perhaps he did not, that he should make 
that stone monumental in the annals of liberty. 

2. John Brown had that peculiar moral organiza^ 
tion of which martyrs are made. The marked feature 
in him was not the sentimental or the intellectual, but 
the ethical. It did not occur to him ever to ask what 
is expedient, what is safe, but what is right. The 
beauty that charmed him was moral beauty, the only 
greatness he respected moral greatness, the courage 
he most admired and coveted moral courage. His 
anger was the ^Tath of justice ; he could love noth- 
ing that was not essentially good ; he hated every- 
thing that failed to stand before conscience. Duty 
was the angel that went before him. Her approval 
was his inspiration ; to her he would be true, though 



514 ADDRESSES. 

false to all other claims ; lier divine form lie would 
follow, not counting his life dear, and over any law, 
custom, or amenity which did not pay her supreme 
homage. He did not speak of men as strong or weak, 
but as good or bad ; did not look at society as refined 
or rude, but as pure or corrupt ; did not say of actions 
they are splendid or commonplace, but they are right 
or wrong. The one long yearning of his nature was, 
not to be amiable and loved, but to be sternly just. 
The God he served was a consuming fire to the 
wicked, and to the down-trodden very pitiful and of 
tender mercy. Such a man could do but one thing 
in the presence of a mighty wrong. He must smite 
with all the power God had given, — must smite unto 
death, if by any means he can ; and nothing is dear 
to him — name, friends, or life — which may nerve his 
arm for the fated blow. 

3. The religious faith of John Brown helped pre- 
pare him for his work. It is faith that removes 
mountains. Unbelief has no " book of martyrs," no 
" lives of the saints." To doubt is to be weak ; only 
as we believe are we strong. No misgiving as to the 
truth of his religion ever disturbed the soul of John 
Brown. He accepted the entire Bible, — Pentateuch, 
Apocalypse, and all, — and grieved for those who were 
not upborne by the like precious faith. I shall never 
forget the wide-open eyes with which a conservative 
friend gazed on me when I told him that a more de- 
voted Christian than John Brown never lived ; and 
that, too, as judged by the old-fashioned, Puritanic 
standard. How strange it will sound in future ages, 
that men claiming to live by the Bible cried, " Away 
with him, crucify him ! " at this aged believer, who 
knew the Bible almost by heart, whose fervent 



JOHN BROWN. 515 

prayers went up to God continually, whose Sabbaths 
were sacredly given to spiritual things, whose children 
were carefully nurtured in the ancestral faith and 
piety, whose daily talk was strewn thick with Scrip- 
ture texts, who promptly rebuked any irreverence or 
ungodliness that met him, whose letters are models of 
faithful and tender religious counsel ! If ever any 
life has been hid with Christ in God, it was John 
Brown's. In that holy retirement, praying and study- 
ing for himself, the light dawned upon his mind ; and 
in that divine light he saw the path he ought to tread. 
There, hardly remembering that there were such things 
as congresses, and judges, and sheriffs, he learned 
what he owed to his country, to humanity, and to 
his God. He knelt at the foot of the divine throne, 
and human tribunals were to him as though they were 
not. They might stand in his way, and he be dashed 
in pieces against them ; but the orbit of his will was 
fixed and changeless. He was a flaming arrow shot 
from the bow of Justice, — which turned neither this 
way nor that way, but went right on till it was 
quenched in the blood of her enemies. 

4. John Brown was shaped for his sacrificial work 
by the simple style of living in which he was bred 
and which he never forsook. All his ideas as to the 
family and society were primitive. He was the father 
of twenty-one children. At home and among friends, 
he recalled the godly Puritan of Colonial times. His 
garments had not the perfume of city parlors on 
them. He knew nothing of the gayeties of life. If 
he saw a picture or statue, or other costly ornament, 
in a drawing-room, he would straightway think how 
many slaves it might buy from bondage. He could 
not bear to lodge in a great hotel, where the lavish 



516 ADDRESSES. 

display pained him, but chose rather to be with far- 
mers and drovers at the plain tavern. God merci- 
fully kept him poor. He knew not the excitement of 
handling vast sums ; to him a fifty-dollar note looked 
large. He never asked how much comfort, culture, or 
luxury will this buy, but how much can I make it do 
for them that are in bonds. The wild-rose of the pas- 
tures was not sweeter than his simplicity ; the moun- 
tain spring under the mossy crag, not purer than his 
honest thought. What he felt and purposed shone 
out through his speech as clear as the stars beneath 
which he watched his flocks. He was so near to Na- 
ture as to seem a part of her, — rugged, simple, true 
and grand ; a soul whose fit attendants were the wild- 
flower, the mountain, the cataract, the fathomless sky, 
and the pathless woods. To such it is that God 
speaks, and they dare do anything but disobey His 
voice. In reply to all cautions coming from any 
human source, John Brown could only say : — 

' ' Shall not the Fashioner command His work ? 

And who am I, that, if He whisper, ' Rise, 

Go forth upon mine errand, ' should reply, 
' Lord God, I love the woman and her sons, — 

I love not scorning- : I beseech thee, God, 

Have me excused.' " 

5. Not yet, however, was the preparation complete. 
This great soul, smooth as the sea in a calm, must be 
aroused. The tempest must come down upon it and 
call forth its hidden wrath, or the pirate ship sailing 
on in defiance of Heaven will not be swallowed up. 
Hence the experiences in Kansas, where the slave- 
power broke through all constitutional restraints and 
framed iniquity into law. If any respect for lower- 
law enactments had remained with John Brown thus 
far, it forsook him now. The lesson which he was 



JOHN BROWN. 517 

not slow to learn, was set him by the invaders from 
Missouri. Should they trample down in blood the 
Free State settlers, and he be held back by the lease 
of compromise ? He would slip that rotten noose. 
Surely no law could bind him to fight with rose-water 
those who came against him brandishing clubs and 
torches. The sacred rights of human nature swept 
away the cobwebs of legislation. The enemies of man 
had taken the sword, and they should feel the edge of 
the sword. The smoke of his burning cabin and the 
blood of his slaughtered sons told him that the jus- 
tice which the times needed was not the slow-footed 
goddess whom the criminal escapes, but that which is 
swift and smites home. If ever anybody had a right 
to despise civil law as a means of redress, that man 
was John Brown. He beheld the bloody riot of op- 
pression, and there was none to deliver the innocent ; 
and therefore he cried out, " Boys, the Lord will aid 
us ! " and he shoved his ramrod down ; . . . and far 
away, where Kansas' grains wave, tinged with their 
blood, will the column rise ! The poet's song and 
History's page will the deeds prolong of John of 
Osawatomie, the martyr to Truth and Right. Bat 
great as were the deeds there done, a greater was 
coming. That lawless border war was a part of the 
needed preparation, — God's my-sterious school in 
which He was training His servant to trust in Him- 
self alone, and strike the blow decreed from eternity 
at His bidding. Henceforth it was John Brown 
against Slavery though hell should gape before him ; 
and '' the sword of the Lord and of Gideon " was his 
manifesto. He chose his ground, he took counsel, 
sought help, prayed, and moved forward. There was 
a voice behind him which said, "This is the way," 



518 ADDRESSES, 

and lie dared not refuse to walk in it. A necessity 
was laid on Mm. The hand of destiny had launched 
him forth. He could no more turn aside from that 
path than a planet from its orbit. When he stood on 
the heights overlooking Harper's Ferry, planning the 
deed for which he had waited twenty years, he might 
have said, with Luther before the Imperial Diet, 
" Here I stand ; I cannot do otherwise ; God help 
me. Amen." 

III. And now let us stand on those same heights 
while he goes down into the vaUey of death to finish 
the work given him to do. Let us see how he led 
captivity captive ; how he laid down his life, that he 
might give life to a nation and a race of men. 

Perhaps nothing excited more ridicule at the time 
than John Brown's plan for a provisional government 
found among his papers. I have read that document 
with care, and find its essential features marvelously 
prophetic. It anticipates mainly the reconstruction 
theory of to-day. His prophetic genius, in which the 
free spirit of the age was incarnate, stood at the goal 
toward which our statesmen are plodding on, " with 
manifold motions making little speed." 

We need not attempt to justify his attack at Har- 
per's Ferry, since he himself condemned it. We have 
already seen that he was in the hand of a Higher 
Power than his own. The will of God overbore his 
human will, and hurled him forward as its avenging 
bolt. St. Paul went up to Jerusalem although he 
knew what would there befall him, being " bound in 
the spirit : " it was a similar bondage — the constraint 
of a divine doom — that bore John Brown down into 
Harper's Ferry. The wisdom of God was in the human 
mistake, making the momentary defeat an everlasting 



JOHN BROWN. 519 

triumph. The blow struck on that gloomy October 
mornino* carried consternation to the heart of the 
Slave Power. That enthroned wickedness felt the 
shock, and, sighing* throughout all its frame, gave sign 
that all was lost. 

John Brown was anxious for a public trial. Not 
that he wished to be acquitted, for he distinctly said, 
" I shall be worth more to be hung than for anything 
else." He had three reasons for desiring such a trial : 
First, that the impression of his insanity, which had 
spread widely, might be disproved ; secondly, that his 
humane and Christian motiv^es, in what he had done, 
might be shown ; and thirdly, that his martyrdom 
might be so published abroad as to rouse up feelings 
of indignation against slavery throughout the world. 
All this he did in his own simple strength, and at des- 
perate odds, so as to go to the scaffold at last in the 
rejoicing spirit of a conqueror. 

1. In case of any attempt of counsel to plead his 
cause, he strictly ordered that no plea of insanity must 
be put in. Annoyed by rumors which were going 
through the country, he said at his trial, " I am per- 
fectly unconscious of insanity, and I reject, so far as 
I am capable, any attempt to interfere in my behalf on 
that score." No one can read the report of the in- 
quisition in the guard-house and not admit that he 
knew himself perfectly. Governor Wise went from 
that inquisition to Richmond and said : " They are 
themselves mistaken who take him to be a madman. 
. . . He is a man of clear head, of courage, fortitude, 
and simple ingenuousness. He is cool, collected, and 
indomitable, and it is but just to say that he was 
humane to his prisoners. . . . He professes to be a 
Christian, and openly preaches universal emancipa- 



620 ADDRESSES. 

tion." All, Pilate ! you could find no fault m the 
man! And one who lacked this impulsive nobleness 
of the Virginian, the prying politician Vallandigham, 
went home and said : " Capt. John Brown is as brave 
and resolute a man as ever headed an insurrection. 
. . . He is the farthest possible remove from the ordi- 
nary ruffian, fanatic, or madman. It was one of the 
best planned and best executed conspiracies that ever 
failed." Thus were all his adversaries ashamed. 

2. The rumor of blood-thirstiness, with that of in- 
sanity, fell to the ground. Never but once has man 
spoken more lovingly than this man to his tormentors. 
"How do you justify your acts?" asked Senator 
Mason. "I think, my friend, you are guilty of a 
great wrong against God and humanity, — I say it 
without wishing to be offensive, — and it would be per- 
fectly right for any one to interfere with you so far as 
to free those you wiUfully and wickedly hold in bond- 
age." Mason replied that "he understood." "I wish 
to say, furthermore," added the bleeding prisoner, 
" that you had better — all you people of the South 
— prepare yourselves for a settlement of this question. 
It must come up for settlement sooner than you are 
prepared for it. . . . You may dispose of me very 
easily, . . . but this question is still to be settled — 
this negro question, I mean." ^ The su:fferer was too 
faint to say any more. But he had triumphed. No 
inquisitor could doubt the loftiness or sincerity of his 
Christian spirit. He even concerned himself for the 
spiritual welfare of his enemies. When Governor Wise 
told him to prepare for eternity, he replied, in moving 
tones : " Governor, I have, from all appearances, not 

1 Prophetic words, and the prophecy so speedily and how awfully 
fulfiUedl 



JOHN BROWN. 521 

more than fifteen or twenty years the start of you in 
the journey to that eternity of which you kindly warn 
me. And whether my tenure here shall be fifteen 
years, or fifteen days, or fifteen hours, I am equally 
prepared to go. There is an eternity behind and an 
eternity before, and the little speck in the centre, 
however long, is but comparatively a minute. I there- 
fore want to tell you to be prepared." Brave words 
these, and as loving as bold ; nor did they fail to take 
captive the susceptible governor. He knew, and 
warmly asserted ever after, that a tender Christian 
spirit reigned in old John Brown. 

And now his soul is at rest. His captors, too much 
in fear to spare his life, have yet been forced to own 
the transcendent quality of his manhood. Words of 
cheer and offers of ministry, from noble men and 
women, come pouring in. Europe lifts up her voice 
in chorus of praise, assuring him that Lis sacrifice will 
indeed thrill the heart of the world. 

" The outer John Brown they will torture and kill, 
And tumble it into the grave ; 
But the inner John Brown may trouble them still 
By its whisperings round with the slave. 

*' Death nears you, John Brown, old outer John Brown, 
And marks you as food for the worm : 
Nor death nor the worm can harnx inner John Brown ; 
So, inner John Brown, stand firm." 

And he did stand firm, — the one serene spirit in that 
crowded court-room, watching the course of his trial 
with a masterly skill, yet lifting not a finger to turn it 
aside from the fatal issue. He was borne back to his 
cell after the verdict, where he passed the time writing 
words of Christian comfort, as strength permitted, to 
his family. Added to the letter thus penned is a brief 



522 ADDRESSES. 

postscript — sublime in its brevity — which simply 
says : " Yesterday, November 2, I was sentenced to be 
hanged on December 2d next. Do not grieve on my 
account. I am still quite cheerful. God bless you ! 
Yours ever, John Brown." Having been carried into 
court to receive this sentence, he was asked what he 
had to say, when he rose with much difficulty and 
said : " Had I interfered in the manner which I ad- 
mit, and which I admit has been fairly proved, — had 
I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the 
intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any 
of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, 
wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered 
and sacrificed what I have in this interference, — it 
would have been all right, and every man in this court 
would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather 
than punishment. This court acknowledges, as I sup- 
pose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book 
kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least 
the New Testament. That teaches me that all things 
' whatsoever I would that men should do unto me I 
should do even so to them.' It teaches me, further, 
' to remember them that are in bonds as bound with 
them.' I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I 
say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any 
respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered 
as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I 
have done, in behalf of His despised poor, was not 
wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that 
I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends 
of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blo^d 
of my children, and with the blood of millions in this 
slave country whose rights are disregarded by v/icked, 
cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit : so let it be 



JOHN BROWN. 523 

done." These great words, spoken in calm and tender 
accents, bowed the angry mob as the wind bows the 
trees of the wood. They stood awed, and gazing in 
mute wonder ; and in that deep silence, we fancy the 
old man heard the listening angels clap their hands. 
Mr. Emerson is not alone in pronouncing this "the 
most eloquent speech of the century." There is but 
one that will bear comparison with it — the speech of 
the Martyr President at Gettysburg. But the speech 
of Abraham Lincoln was carefully written out in his 
study; this of John Brown was spoken under the 
shock of a sudden surprise, and without a moment's 
preparation. That fell from a strong and well man 
on the eager ears of listening thousands ; this from a 
man too feeble to stand upright, after the exhausting 
worry of a fortnight's trial, in the midst of coun- 
tenances that glared on him with savage wrath. 
Abraham Lincoln came forth from the executive 
mansion, and stood on a great battlefield of the war, 
inspired with memories of a world-renowned victory ; 
John Brown was brought in irons from a felon's cell, 
and beheld, in vision, only the forms of his slain 
friends and the shameful gallows. How singnilar that 
these two speeches, at which the world will never 
cease to wonder, were spoken by our country's two 
greatest martyrs, — one by John Brown, whose mar- 
tyrdom stands at the opening, the other by Abraham 
Lincoln, whose martyrdom stands at the close, of the 
monstrous pro-slavery rebellion ! The chord of sym- 
path}^ which joins North Elba to Springfield is perfect, 
nor can its vibrations cease to thrill mankind till the 
love of liberty in their hearts expires. Those two 
graves have one voice, and teach one lesson : — 



524 ADDRESSES. 

" Right forever of the scaffold, wrong forever of the throne ; 
But that scaffold sways the future, and, hehmd the dim tmknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own." 

The interval of thirty days between the sentence 
and its execution is one unbroken triumph. The 
right man, so often placed at disadvantage, is in the 
right place at last. The hour had come for John 
Brown to show what he was. Transfigured on the 
mount of suffering, his sacrificial spirit shone out with 
a surpassing lustre. The gold shut within the rocky 
matrix flowed forth in peerless brightness, now that 
he was bruised and in the furnace. Few things are 
beautiful out of season, but everything in its season, 
and John Brown's season had come. You have read 
the legend of the enchanted harp. For ages it stood 
silent on the mountain top, its strings black with the 
eating rust, while tree and leaf and blossom flourished 
around. But at length the hurricane was let loose. 
And while the great oaks lay prostrate, and flowers 
and leaves were smitten into the ground, that harp 
stood unscathed above the ruin, and gave forth strains 
of music that charmed and stilled the warring ele- 
ments. Thus it was with the soul of old John Brown. 
No one in whom the instincts of humanity yet lived 
could look on him during that month of waiting and 
not say, with Governor Wise, " He is the best specimen 
of a man I ever met." If there had been anything 
rustic or overbearing in him before, it all now disap- 
peared. The tempest howling in wrath about him 
put his great nature in tune. His manners grew gen- 
tler than any knight's, his accents tender as a mother's 
by her sleeping infant, his eye calm with the light of 
suffering love. I ought not to mar his letters by 
quoting from them. Get them, and read them for 



JOHN BROWN. 525 

yourself. You will find them full of such passages as 
this : " I have enjoyed remarkable cheerfulness and 
composure of mind ever since my confinement ; and 
it is a great comfort to feel assured that I am per- 
mitted to die for a cause, not merely to pay the debt 
of nature, as all must. ... I am entirely composed, 
and my sleep in particular is as sweet as tliat of a 
healthy, joyous, little infant. I pray God that He will 
grant me a continuance of the same calm, delightful 
dream — if it be a dream — until I come to know of 
those realities ' which eyes have not seen, and which 
ears have not heard.' I have scarce realized that I 
am in prison, or in irons at all." And what could be 
nobler than this, in his last letter to his family ? — "I 
am waiting the hour of my public murder with great 
composure of mind and cheerfulness, feeling the strong 
assurance that in no other possible way could I be used 
to so much advantage for God and humanity, and that 
nothing that either I or all my family have sacrificed 
or suffered will be lost." But once more, ye who have 
an ear for the gems of composition, listen to this : " I 
cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered 
the coming day, nor a storm so furious or dreadful as 
to prevent the return of warm sunshine and a cloud- 
less sky." Did that sentence flow from the pen of 
Jeremy Taylor or Laurence Sterne ? Oh, no I it is 
simply the postscript to a familiar letter, written in a 
Virginia prison by a doomed man " who knew not let- 
ters, having never learned." The assurance that God 
had counted him worthy to suffer was his liberal edu- 
cation. This consciousness gave all his S23iritual pow- 
ers an instantaneous maturity, such as universities and 
long years of patient study cannot afford. 

And this is the man whom they led forth to death 



526 ADDRESSES, 

on that clear December day. The heavens greeted 
him with unwonted splendor. And his keepers trem- 
bled, and their joints were loosed through fear, as they 
saw him give the kiss to the poor slave-mother's child. 
And so he led the way, going before them up to the 
place of sacrifice. But hold ! what is that ? See him 
raise his pinioned arm, and reverently lift the covering 
from his head ! Ah, it is a vision ! He beholds the 
long procession of martyrs of all ages filing past ; and 
he salutes them, and wishes not to be " kept waiting," 
as he sees them halt and open their glittering column 
to receive him in ! And so he bows his head, and the 
wave of death — wave of life immortal — rolls over 
him. And they that had stood afar off weeping, came 
and took up his body, and bore it away secretly by 
night, for fear of the scorners ; and they laid it ten- 
derly to rest beside the ancestral gravestone, and 
carved his name on the everlasting granite, and de- 
parted. 

" And the stars of heaven were looking kindly down, 
And John Brown's soul was marching on." 

I had thought, before finishing these remarks, to 
make some reply to those who condemned the act of 
John Brown. But after all that has happened, I do 
not like even to seem to look at him from that point 
of view. To do so is to confront the judgment of 
mankind. A voice as the voice of many waters 
replies to the charge that he was wrong. We have 
wiped from our statute-books, amid the acclamations 
of our people, the enactments v/hicli made him a mar- 
tyr. What further need has he of vindication ? The 
pirate craft which sunk his little bark has itseK been 
blown to the winds by our good ship of state, which 
now walks the sea in triumph with his flag at mast- 



JOHN BROWN. 527 

head. John Brown needs not our defense to-day, but 
we cannot stand without his. If any attempt to speak 
against him, the universal conscience bids them be 
silent ; the very ground on which they think to stand 
has been swept away. Who am I, that I should take 
up weapons in his defense whose only foes are the 
enemies of man ? The most that can be said to-day 
is what Owen Love joy said on the floor of Congress 
while revolvers were pointed at his head : " In regard 
to John Brown, you want me to curse him. I will not 
curse John Brown. You want me to pour out exe- 
crations on the head of old Osavvatomie. Though 
all the slaveholding Balaks in the country fill their 
houses with silver and gold and proffer it, I will not 
curse him. I honestly condemn what he did, from 
the standpoint of human law : but I believe that his 
purpose was a good one ; that, so far as his own motives 
before God were concerned, they were honest and truth- 
ful ; and no one can deny that he stands head and 
shoulders above any other character that appeared on 
the stage of that tragedy from beginning to end." 

But let us take the ground of human law a moment, 
and see what follows. The statutes which moved John 
Brown to go down to Harper's Ferry have been ex- 
pimged, while those which judge traitors to death 
yet remain. Where were Jefferson Davis to-day, and 
all the officers and men who fought under him, if the 
chalice commended to John Brown's lips should re- 
turn to theirs ? Though I think it was a lighter pun- 
ishment to be hanged by Governor Wise than to be 
pardoned by Andrew Johnson. Say that John Brown 
was " justly hung," and the South should have been a 
desert before now. I go as far as any in the spirit of 
forgiveness ; as far as it is safe to go in the policy of 



528 ADDRESSES. 

amnesty. But let us not strain at a gnat while swal- 
lowing a camel. Let us not hurl a dead law at one 
who intended no wrong, but only right, while holding 
back the sword from those whom sheer justice, whether 
human or divine, forbids to live. 

There is no name, however bright, -connected with 
John Brown's by a friendly link, but is the brighter 
for that connection. John A. Andrew of Massachu- 
setts dared to say that " John Brown was right ; " and 
that one brave step was what made him our peerless 
governor throughout the war. The lips which once 
cursed Governor Andrew for that word are blessing 
him to-day. Then they went into a public hall in 
Boston, and broke up a public meeting, shouting, 
" Tell John Andrew John Brown 's dead ; " now they 
are asking how they can honor a governor whose offi- 
cial career so honors not only his own State, but the 
nation and the aofe. That which bound our hearts to 
Andrew as with hooks of steel was his sympathy with 
everything which smote the monster of oppression. 
And this is the charmed flower in his memorial gar- 
land which can never fade though every other should 
perish and fall away. As of him, so of others, — the 
dead and the living, the lofty and the lowly, the 
conspicuous and the obscure. They dared to honor 
at least the motives, if not the act, of John Brown. 
And now his world-wide renown is in turn an orna- 
ment and glory to them. 

But if John Brown sheds such lustre on those who 
stood forth for him, what of those who insisted that 
he should be slain? We shall see. I have seen a 
letter from the wife of the general who commanded 
the Virginia troops at John Brown's execution. It is 
a letter written since the war, and begging a little 



JOHN BROWN. 529 

charity for herself and her half-starved children. She 
paints in vivid colors the contrast between former 
grandeur and her present want. It was her husband, 
General Taliaferro, that kept the martyr waiting with 
the rope about his neck while his regiments performed 
the dumb show of a battle. The officer whom Mr. 
Buchanan sent to represent the United States at Har- 
per's Ferry was Colonel Robert E. Lee. I but speak 
his name ; you know the rest. It is a scroll we do not 
care to examine, flying in the midst of heaven, and 
written all over with mourning, lamentation, and woe. 
The lieutenant who led the marines against the engine 
house was J. E. B. Stuart, afterwards Lee's favorite 
cavalry officer, and slain in one of the battles near 
Richmond. The two politicians who worried the old 
man with their cross-questioning while his every breath 
was a low groan, were Clement L. Vallandigham, 
whom North and South alike spewed out of their 
mouth in war-time ; and Senator Mason, the accom- 
plice of Slidell, whose name now flits about the earth 
spurned by every manly foot. 

As of men, so of places. There is no spot of 
ground closely related to the great deed of John 
Brown but owes its fame to him. For his sake, his- 
tory will celebrate Harper's Ferry, the battlefields in 
Kansas, and the remote farm at North Elba. He 
rescues those places from obscurity, and makes them 
memorable for all coming time. He does for them 
what Shakspeare does for Stratford-upon-Avon, what 
Washington does for Mt. Yernon. Not for their own 
sake wiU future generations come thronging to those 
localities, but that they may pay homage to his spirit, 
and " take from him increase of devotion to that cause 
for which he paid the last fuU measure of devotion." 



1 



580 ADDRESSES. 

There are to-day millions of people all over the world 
who know nothing of important battles fought near 
Harper's Ferry ; but they know, and can never for- 
get, that John Brown there struck for humanity and 
God. Those everlasting hills are his monument, and 
will be more and more cherished as that, and nothing 
more, till heavens and earth pass away. As long as 
those mountains stand, it shall be their proud office 
to speak of him. And the far-off plains of Kansas, 
joining with the lofty Adirondack peaks, shall take 
up the voice. And so all together, in eternal chorus, 
shall proclaim : — 

*' They never fail who die 
In a great cause. The block may soak their gore ; 
Their heads may sodden in the sun ; their limbs 
Be strung to city gates and castle walls, 
But still their spirit walks abroad. Though years 
Elapse, and others share as dark a doom. 
They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts 
Which overpower all others, and conduct 
The wtwld at last to freedom.' ' 

Soldiers in this sacrificial army, men and women 
toiling for the rights of human nature, bethink you 
to-day into whose labors you have entered. Sit not 
idly down to exult over the victories of the past. 
Other battles are to be fought, and other victims must 
bleed, before the full triumph can come. In that 
vision of the risen martyrs, who halted near John 
Brown while he stood ready to be offered, the past 
and future were one. He saw but a single host; 
God's whole sacramental army — stretching away to 
the first and on to the last — of them that are slain 
for Him and His word. Who are they — the anointed 
ones in coming ages — on whom the dying martyr saw 
his mantle fall ? The Lord knoweth them, and will 
bring them forth in their season, as one great crisis 



JOHN BROWN. 531 

after another calls for the sacrifice. They are the best 
beloved among His children, dearer to Him than the 
apple of His eye ; and therefore are they chosen out, 
that He may put this special honor on their names. 
All that is good in the world is safe. Love, justice, 
and truth shall still prevail. For these chosen ones 
shall come forth as they are needed, and shall fill up 
what is behind of holy suffering. Though weak in 
themselves, and shrinking with an awful dread from 
such testimony as John Brown gave, their heavenly 
Father shall make them able to drink the cup which 
He drank, and to be baptized with His baptism. 



EULOGY UPON HENRY WILSON.^ 

" Thy gentleness hath made me great ! " are the 
words which David spoke to God, in the day which 
saw him victorious over his foes, and sitting crowned 
as the king of Israel. "Thy gentleness hath made 
me great ! " are the words which Henry Wilson may 
reverently and thankfully utter, as he bows before 
the white throne of heaven, and yields up the record 
of his remarkable life. Whatever he was in his char- 
acter and achievements, he was in a singular manner 
the workmanship of God. Name and lineage did 
nothing for him but to drag him down; nor could he 
begin to rise till he had cast them off. Wealth did 
not help him, nor social standing, nor the university, 
nor polite culture, nor the gifts of genius, — if we ex- 
cept his gift for eager and unremitting toil. God said, 
" I will take this child of obscurity and want, and will 
show the world how I make leaders for nations. No 
flesh shall glory in my presence. Men shall see that 
I choose the things which are not, to bring to naught 
things that are. I will teach those who boast that 
Abraham was their father, that I can of the stones 
raise up children to Abraham." How ungentle his 
birth, his lot in boyhood and youth, and even much in 
his later manhood ! — all unpropitious, save the stoop- 
ing and uplifting gentleness of God which was with 
him from first to last. God foresaw what was coming 

^ Delivered in the State House, Boston, Mass. , November, 1875. 



EULOGY UPON HENRY WILSON. 533 

to a great people ; and in the loneliness and silence of 
the hill-country of New England He gently began to 
make ready His man for the exigency. Humbler than 
the employment of the lad who kept his father's sheep 
at Betlilehem was that of the future Senator and 
Vice-President. The lion and the bear which he 
met and slew, were the temptations of ignorance and 
pinching poverty. Like the Bethlehemite's son, he 
was of a ruddy and fair countenance ; nor did the 
cares of state ever take that bloom from his genial 
face. His young eyes looked on the hoary grandeur 
of Mount Washington. He strolled about the shores 
of the beautiful Winnipesaukee, — " God's smile." 
He plucked the wild rose of the pastures, and walked 
beneath the whispering pines. These were the frame- 
work of his infancy and boyhood ; these his solemn 
teachers ; these the influences of nature, through which 
the still small voice of God spoke to him. 

Very likely he did not comprehend the voice, or 
know who it was that spoke, in those tender years. The 
divine dream was in his soul, but he waited for the 
day to declare it. He carried it with him, a fire shut 
up in his bones, when he went from his comfortless 
home to be the drudge of a farm. Here he first be- 
gan to be conscious of the indwelling energy, feeling 
it in the form of an insatiable thirst for knowledge. 
He was permitted to attend the district school on daj^s 
when he could not work out of doors ; and one of his 
first feats was to say his grammar-book through, from 
end to end, at a single recitation. He took long walks 
after nightfall, that he might read a borrowed book or 
newspaper too precious for him to take home, — read- 
ing them eagerly, so as to be back at his work when 
the morning should dawn. A kind lady, a sister of 



534 ADDRESSES. 

tlie late Levi Woodbury, saw what spirit was moving 
in him, and gained him access to her husband's ample 
library. Thus he was enabled to read about a thou- 
sand volumes before he was twenty-one years old ; read- 
ing them, as we shall see by computing the time, at 
the rate of two a week, — reading by the flickering 
brands on the hearth, for the most part, while his ex- 
acting master slept. 

Being now of age, and still obeying the impulse 
within him, though he knew not that it was from God, 
he started on foot for a certain town of Natick, where 
he had heard there was a chance for young men, — 
having a few dollars in his pocket, and the rest of his 
worldly goods slung over his shoulder on a straight 
hickory stick. True emblem of the man was that 
stick, — honest, self-reliant, tough and strong, as those 
who leaned upon him always found. He stopped over 
but one night, on this journey of a hundred miles, and 
paid for his lodging in advance. Passing through our 
city on the second day, he was not too weary and foot- 
sore to go for a moment to Bunker Hill, whose story 
he knew by heart ; nor to find his way under the dome 
of our State House, where he stood trembling with 
enthusiasm. What a contrast between that bashful 
youth, inquiring his way of gruff attendants, and the 
scenes of the last few days ! — his death a matter of 
concern in foreign courts ; a nation gathering in sor- 
row around his bier ; escorted through Baltimore, ay, 
through the streets of Baltimore ; resting in Independ- 
ence Hall ; Broadway draped, and thronged with civic 
and military processions ; lying in state, where he once 
was but tolerated, near the sculptured forms of im- 
mortal patriots, and amid the battle-frayed standards 
of the republic and the grand old commonwealth. 



EULOGY UPON HENRY WILSON. 535 

That he thirsted for knowledge, and for personal 
independence, was all he yet knew of the Divine pur- 
pose concerning him, as he found his way into the 
little hamlet near midnight, and asked for work and 
lodging. A few months of eager reading and toil, 
during which he seemed hardly to eat or sleep, and he 
is back among the hills of New Hampshire, teaching 
in winter, and working and studying all the time, with 
his face set toward a university course. But suddenly 
his little earnings are lost through the fault of one 
whom he had trusted, and he is once more in Natick 
at his simple craft, the hope of a formal education for- 
ever given up. Now he makes the acquaintance of 
that noble woman, Lydia Maria Child ; and thus he 
is made to breathe the spirit of the Garrison move- 
ment, just beginning to stir the strong New England 
heart. The divine dream in his soul is cleared up a 
little. He begins to see the path, though as yet he 
does not recognize the voice. The debates, in the 
society of young mechanics, turn upon national ques- 
tions, — finance, manufactures, the rights of the peo- 
ple, the cause of the oppressed. His opponents nick- 
name him the "Natick Cobbler" in an unguarded 
hour ; and his friends, catching up the word as a pop- 
ular advertisement, send him forth during the Harri- 
son campaign to thrill the souls of the masses, and to 
win for himself a seat in the General Court. Grave 
heads shook, and said, " What rustic is this that dares 
to come pushing and elbowing his way among the pol- 
ished leaders of the great Whig Party ? " He hardly 
knew himself who he was, any more than they ; but 
God knew, and he jdelded to the Divine impulse which 
was swaying him. He is placed on committees ; and 
he dares to offer minority reports when his conscience 



536 ADDRESSES. 

fails to go with the majority. He is returned again 
and again to his seat by his loving and faithful towns- 
men. He goes from this hall to the Senate Chamber 
hard by, where, as presiding officer, he amazes his 
critics and delights his friends by his felicitous wel- 
comes to President Fillmore, and the famous Hun- 
garian exile, Kossuth. Democrats were dear to him, 
if their votes might help him place Charles Sumner 
in the Senate of the United States. His zeal for the 
American laborer made him a tariff man, — a zeal 
which logically made him willing that the Free-soil 
party should join its forces with those of the Native 
American, so called, though it was his conscience that 
made him a Free-soiler and Republican. Hence the 
combined power which, greatly to his surprise, lifted 
him into a seat on the same floor with Sumner. Never 
were two men more unlike, in all but the high resolve, 
which inspired them both, to do what they could for 
the overthrow of a system which threatened the life 
of the nation, and offended the conscience of the 
world. 

To the history of the years which followed, al- 
most a score in number, I must barely allude. It is 
a part of the history of the nation, — the grandest 
and most dreadful chapter in its annals, in which it 
was torn by dissensions and baptized with blood. It 
piqued the culture of our good city that this bluff 
mechanic should succeed to the place of her Webster, 
her Everett, her Winthrop, her Choate. But God 
said even then to the secret heart of some, '' Wait a 
little, and I will show you what I will do with this 
man for justice, for your country, for your proud com- 
monwealth." The terrible debate opened from whose 
seething depths went up the vapors which steadily 



EULOGY UPON HENRY WILSON, 537 

gathered into the war-cloud on high. His opponents 
found, though he was not addicted to either grammar 
or rhetoric, that his mind was a storehouse of poHtical 
knowledge, which he could readily marshal against 
them with crushing effect. While his colleague went 
into the struggle with a more lordly bearing, and 
wielded a keener sword, he watched for the key to the 
position, and so dealt his blows as to cause less danger 
of recoil. His simple good-nature made him well- 
nigh invulnerable. What was the use in trying to 
quarrel with such a man ? He seemed to be utterly 
unconscious of insult, while volleys of abuse, and 
bloody threats, and stinging taunts and sarcasms filled 
the air. When Mr. Sumner was stricken down, he said 
the attack was brutal and cowardly ; and for these 
words he was challenged to mortal combat. But he 
replied that his conscience would not let him fight 
a duel, though he believed fully in the right of self- 
defense ; and there the matter dropped. His steady 
nerves, his sinewy frame, his herculean strength, had 
been observed ; and his foes, feeling sure that some- 
body besides Henry Wilson would be hurt if they 
provoked him too far, concluded to let him alone. 

At length the gathering cloud burst. It could not 
be averted ; the storm must come. God foreknew 
this, as we did not ; and the men whom His gentleness 
had been lifting up were ready, each for his solemn 
part. To Henry Wilson fell the chairmanship of 
military affairs ; and the prodigious capacity for work 
which he showed in that place is known to all who 
saw hijn there. What president or cabinet ofHcer, 
what general in the field, what governor, or regiment, 
or patient in the hospital, or soldier's widow, ever had 
occasion to complain of him ? The general-in-chief at 



538 ADDRESSES. 

the opening of the war said that his daily task was 
equal to the strength of ten men. Thus he toiled, till 
the forces of the rebellion were spent. And in the 
clear dawn of peace, during the weary efforts at re- 
construction which were finally successful, the prob- 
lem of his life was solved. We all saw for what God 
had made and endowed him in the light of the terrible 
exigency which had been his grand opportunity. 

And yet the Divine apocalypse was still to come to 
him. That mystery of the energy which had burned 
and flamed within him, was to be solved in the pres- 
ence of death. God quenched the light in his simple 
home, and laid his only hope of posterity in the dust. 
He bowed his head, and was silent, and listened. And 
in that silence he heard the voice which had spoken 
to him only in confused whispers before. He knew 
whence it came. It was the voice of God. His soul 
melted before that open vision ; and, lifting his dimmed 
eyes to the tender face, he said, "Abba, Father." 
Thenceforth he knew who it was that had raised him 
up, and disciplined him with hardship, and used him 
for the great objects of patriotism and philanthropy. 
He went into the house of that God, and there acknowl- 
edged Him as his God, and paid his vows in the pres- 
ence of the people. From that day forward, as was 
clear to his nearest friends, he was another man. 
The surges of ambition and of mighty desires grew 
calm within him. He walked with God. He had 
found the interpretation of his dream. 

Now he would write his book. Now he would re- 
new old friendships. Now he would pour balm into 
wounds which had been given in the heat of debate. 
Now he would visit the South, and show her impulsive 
people that he had borne them no malice, while de- 



EULOGY UPON HENRY WILSON. 639 

noimcing their doctrines, and striving to crush their 
armies. Now he would be the counsellor of his polit- 
ical party, a modest Nestor among our statesmen, an 
adviser to those just entering public life, a friend of 
reformers and of all good reforms. But his calm sun 
hasted to its going down. Hardly had the secret of 
the life-long guardianship been revealed to him, when 
God whispered to him another secret ; namely, that he 
had finished his work. " No more, my child ; it is time 
to take rest," said God ; and the silver cord was loosed, 
the golden bowl was broken, the pitcher was broken 
at the fountain, the wheel was broken at the cistern. 

By a providence much regretted among his friends, 
the circumstances of his death were singidarly like 
those of his birth. God took him out of the hands 
of his near friends and went almost alone with him 
into the capitol of the nation, there spreading for him 
his dying-couch, beneath that lofty dome, on the field 
where his hardest battles had been fought, where 
his mightiest triumphs had been won. " Fear not," 
said the now well-known voice, as he laid him down. 
" Fear not : my gentleness, which hath made thee 
great, is still round about thee ; my rod and my staff 
they shall comfort thee." And so they went, both of 
them together, into the deepening valley. " You will 
ride out to-day, Mr. Vice-President," said his attend- 
ant, just as his last earthly dawn was fading into the 
everlasting morning. He did ride out, but not in any 
material vehicle. The chariot of God was in waiting 
for him. He rode out of death into life, out of shad- 
ows into eternal sunlight, out of corruption into in- 
corruption. 

Rulers and public servants, sitting as you now do 
in the presence of these honored remains, put far 



540 ADDRESSES. 

from you tlie thought that republics are ungrateful. 
The thanks may be late in coming, but they are sure 
to him who deserves them. We cannot always see 
that you are doing right, though such be the fact ; for 
your action may come to us distorted and colored by 
an unfriendly medium. Some of you, and many oth- 
ers not here, owe much to the noble candor of Henry 
Wilson in this respect. We always thought better of 
Congress after listening a quiet hour to him. He 
was indignant at the charge of wholesale corruption 
in that body. He insisted that the honesty of no 
class of men in the country could bear so searching a 
scrutiny as theirs. His own good name suffered some- 
what at times ; for he was a practical statesman, and 
therefore could not always bring his measures up to 
the level of oiir ideas. But now we see that he was 
right ; that he sought to do his best ; that he did all 
which the conditions under which he was forced to 
act would permit him to do. And hence we are con- 
tent. Nay, we are more than content. We come out 
to greet him with our welcomes, and to embalm his 
memory in the nation's heart. The republic mourns 
him, Massachusetts sorrows over him ; but our grief 
is mild, compared with that of his own townsmen. 
This great honor is his, that the atmosphere of love 
grows more dense about him the nearer he gets to his 
home. In Natick there will be but few dry eyes or 
open shops on the morrow. The villagers will throng 
to his modest burial-place, the strong and the feeble, 
old men and maidens, and matrons and youths ; and 
there they will weep for him, a tomb more precious 
than marble or bronze. He was their brother, their 
father, their familiar neighbor, their equal and con- 
stant friend. 



EULOGY UPON HENRY WILSON. 541 

Ye sons of toil, who have followed me along the 
pathway of this wondrous life, let not its lesson be 
lost on you. Let it cheer you in your despondency, 
and admonish you in your wayward moods. That les- 
son is, that character is success ; that persevering toil 
is victory ; that fidelity to the highest convictions of 
the soul is honor and renowTi. This man's story is 
our argument for patience, for self-denial, for temper- 
ance, for simple truth, for love to God and love to 
man. God has many spheres or planes of duty for 
His childi'en ; but, all alike, those that honor Him He 
will honor. Despise not the opportunity which He 
puts into your hand to-day ; for small though it be, 
seeming no more than a thread of gossamer perhaps, 
it shall grow to a cable in your grasp, and shall draw 
untold advantages to you. The serious question in 
our modern life, with its luxury and temptations to 
ease, is how to train our boys up to that sturdy man- 
hood which shall make them the pillars of the nation. 
Necessity is the mother of a great many things besides 
invention. She is the mother of presidents, of states- 
men, of profound thinkers, of scholars and poets; 
and if we cannot make duty a substitute for necessity, 
where that has been taken away by an easy lot in life, 
the future of our country is indeed dark. 

Thoughtful patriots, looking with concern on the 
unlifted veil of the future, let your remembrance of 
what God did through Henry Wilson quiet your 
forebodings. The same gentleness which raised him 
up, and made him great for the exigencies of the 
nation in his day, can raise up others also. Did he 
seem to you to stand, like a mighty shield, between 
the highest office in the land and a certain fear which 
had begam to oppress the air ? The same God who 



542 ADDRESSES. 

has removed him can put something stronger in his 
place ; or else, possibly, God means to show us that 
the fear is groundless. Yes, we will trust our God, 
who has done marvelous things for us, never yet fail- 
ing to give us the man for whom the crisis called. 
Lincoln, and Seward, and Stanton, and Chase, and 
Andrew, and Sumner, and Wilson, — these, and a 
great multitude of others, both the lofty and the lowly, 
in council-chamber and on the field of blood. He has 
given. What an august company it is ! I see their 
transfigured forms. Their presence makes this air 
vital. They fill the room. Their benign faces bend 
over us. We feel their breath on our hot cheeks ; 
and their calm words are almost audible to us in the 
solemn hush of our grief, while they point us upward 
and say, " The eternal God is your refuge, and under- 
neath are the everlasting arms." 

*' O sentinels ! whose tread we heard 
Through long- hours when we could not see, 
Pause now ; exchange with cheer the word, 
The unchanging watchword — Liberty ! 

" Look backward, how much has been won ! 
Look round, how much is yet to win ! 
The watches of the night are done ; 
The watches of the day begin. 

** O God, whose mighty patience holds 
The day and night alike in view, 
Thy will our dearest hopes enfolds ; 
Lord, keep us steadfast, patient, true ! '* 




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